Despite the lyrical wisdom of Pink Floyd, we do need an education, especially when it’s a Gin Education Dinner. Just ask craft distiller Ian Cutler of Cutler’s Artisan Spirits , who is willing to be our teacher for the evening on June 12. “As opposed to whiskey, when it comes to gin, it’s still a mystery spirit to many people,” Cutler opines. “They often don’t even know what the key flavor is, let alone there are multiple styles.”
So think of the dinner/tasting that Cutler has developed with Phil Wright at Bar 29 as a way to lose your ginnocence, so speak. After a three-course meal paired with cocktails featuring jenever/London dry, Old Tom/barrel-rested, and New Western/sloe gin, you’ll know all about that key ingredient juniper (the taste gin-o-phobes often call Christmas tree), plus a whole bunch of history. Along the way you’ll have eaten a strawberry goat cheese salad, a Wagyu beef slider with bacon onion jam, lemon aioli and garlic fries, and sesame-ginger flat iron steak lettuce wraps with peanut sauce.
Cutler, always for “getting more knowledge out,” has often had a hand in public events, and when recently talking to Wright mentioned he hoped to do a gin dinner. Before he knew it he was pleased to have a partner, for as he says, “They’ve got some classy cocktails at Bar 29.”