:: fred's top 10 cocktail moments of 2025 ::

Back in 2010, someone asked what my favorite cocktail that year was, and I decided not only to start a list of my favorite drinks, but I decided to list the top moments of the previous 12 months. So to continue with the tradition, here is the 16th annual installment:

1. Changed jobs.
After helping to open the C-Side Bar in October 2024, I decided to leave in November 2025 to seek out adventures that would give me more hours, more money, and more purpose. Too many of the shifts were solo ones (not the original plan, but it was rarely busy enough for duo shifts which put a crimp into the number of hours I got scheduled for). It never felt like a team and more like a solo sport (save for the fact that all my night efforts to make money were split with the day time bartender). When it was time to leave, I reached out to my contact at the local tiki wonderland Wusong Road after seeing a job ad for a bartender there. That was countered by an offer to help open up their new space, the Mexican-themed Gato Exotico, on the otherside of the mall from the C-Side. I started there at the latter half of November to help set the place up and to do training, and we opened on Black Friday and are rounding out our 5th week in a few days. It is great to be part of a team again and feel part of growing a community of regulars. Here is a photo that a friend took during our soft opening during the Boston Tiki Society event: 2. Did some writing.
Since my job at the C-Side Bar was not paying the bills, I sought out freelance work for a bit. I wrote two more articles for Men's Journal and would have written more but my editor left for another magazine that was not liquor related; I wrote a history of Bock beer with bottle suggestions for each of the styles, and a piece on my favorite Canadian whisky: Lot 40 Rye. I wrote another article for Edible Boston that began with a pitch on rhubarb drinks for Spring that ended up being an article on local amaro options for the Summer issue (included a rhubarb-root liqueur). The biggest honor was getting my name in the bylines of Punch with the Georgetown Club that I remastered from the work of Charles H. Baker Jr.'s South American Gentleman's Companion for the menu at Loyal Nine years ago. Besides my Men's Journal editor leaving, I got stalled out when one publication accepted my pitch and later the article I submitted, but continuously delayed publication with mumblings that the photos were not good enough. This was a band retrospective and a collection bartender-submitted recipes and photos for a The Clash cocktail biopic. I ended up requesting the right to publishing it elsewhere since they had never delivered payment to own the piece. In addition, while I did not get the byline for these three articles, I was either the only or one of the two or three people quoted extensively in these articles in The Manual on best Bourbons for beginners, debunking cocktail myths, and what makes a winter beer. Also, I had my Hot Buttered Cider recipe published in issue #1 of the local 'zine The North of the Charles Revue.
3. Gave talks and wrote essays. I had two opportunities to speak in public this year. The first was in January when a bar guest at Josephine had invited me to give a talk in Colorado Springs for a historic preservation society that was a year and a half in the making. I presented a 44 slide Powerpoint for a 75 minute session at altitude (I practiced the talk at 60 feet above sea level and did not realize how much less oxygen there is at 6000 feet) on the intangible heritage of cocktails. I also made two drinks from the talk, namely Jerry Thomas' Saratoga and Brother Cleve's Ward Nine, at the happy hour afterwards. The second opportunity was in September when I participated in a Boston Rum Week panel discussion on "The Anatomy of Rum Cocktails: Choices, Trends and Culture in a Glass" with moderator Garnett Philip and co-panelists Shannon Mustipher and Katie Stryjewski. Speaking of rum, I finished up a historical piece on the distillery in Somerville, Massachusetts, about a mile from my house that lasted from the early 1880s until Prohibition. The publication of historical maps online gave the last bits to a story that began for me around 16 years before. I also wrote an essay on how to talk to your bar hero after returning home from Portland Cocktail Week this year. 4. Traveled a little
As I alluded to above, I ventured to Colorado Springs for two nights to give a talk. The first night, I visited a few local breweries (check out the ornate historic bar by clicking on the photo in my Untappd check-in at Phantom Canyon Brewing Company). After my talk on the second day, I hit 3 cocktail bars after dinner starting with Shame & Regret where I had this Malört drink. That bartender convinced me to go to Cocktails After Dusk where she introduced me (after doing a shot with the bartender there). And my final stop (which had been recommended by multiple people) was Chiba, a Japanese cyberpunk bar where I later met up with the bartender from the second bar after their shift. Wearing a Fernet Branca shift might have helped usher in that level of hospitality. In May, I traveled to Atlanta for the United States Bartenders' Guild (USBG) national meeting where I sat in on a number of great talks including a history of absinthe and its many uses in mixology by Darian Everding and Theodore Breaux that I wrote about in the Wide Eyed after being gifted the cocktail in an airline-friendly container. There were some great night time events with one of my favorites being at a hunting lodge-themed speakeasy called the Ranger Station for a Sazerac-sponsored event where I had the Tiger's Tale. Since the conference center was so far away from everything, I only hit one brewery on the way to the airport, Monday Night Brewing. My final bit of travel was in October for my third Portland Cocktail Week (2012 and 2022 were my other two). As a student, I had a full week of classes and great night time events including an over-the-top haunted house and yard done up by Campari. I also gave back by signing up to provide mentoring sessions; it started as 9 official ones that folks reserved in advance, and 3 more happened either on the fly or by messaging. It was also a great feeling to connect that week with folks in their 20s to remind me of the aspects of that time in my life including music and literature.

5. Created some drinks. I wrote up around 28 drinks created in 2025 in a variety of styles. There were Old Fashioned ones like the Devil's Disciple, Illegal Dance Moves, and Souls of the Mountain. Tropical ones like the Cobra's Tail, Bucking the Tiger, and The Nameless City. Manhattan- or Martini-like numbers like Mexico City Blues and Dream of the Lava Beds. Unusual Sours like the Black Hand Society, the Angostura-heavy Rogue's Romance, Ghost Rider, and the Lechuza. I even created a potential cocktail for Gato Exotico that got workshopped and improved upon called the Aztec Death Whistle. 6. My drinks got featured in videos, databases, articles, and books.
I think the most amusing of these was being featured on Spike's Breezeway Cocktail Hour on YouTubewhere they made fun of my name and mixed up my Jungle Grog (my 2018 recipe). My Cantinflas Mustache based off of Chris Elford's Sharpie Mustache with base spirits inspired by Phil Ward's Oaxacan Old Fashioned was featured on Difford's Guide -- my fourth drink to make it there but my first to earn Simon's 5 star rating! That recipe was also published in Bar & Restaurant News renamed as La Calavera Catrina for a Day of the Dead article. Also in Bar & Restaurant News, my Bornean Spiderhunter with Cynar for an article on low ABV drinks, my Horror Hotel for Halloween, and my Army Navy Grog for Memorial Day. Horror Hotel was also published in Clair McLafferty's Spooky Cocktails book in late Summer. Many of my recipes and recipes gathered from my site found their way into five of J.E. Clapham's books this year, including ones on Benedictine, Chartreuse volume 2, Cynar, Suze, and Smith & Cross.

7. Read a bit.
I finished 20 books this year. My favorites include The Tequila Ambassador by Tomas Estes and associates and republished in a grand larger format by Matt Pietrek's Wonk Press, and also a cultural, historical, and scientific overview in Agave Spirits: The Past, Present, and Future of Mezcals by Gary Paul Nabhan and David Suro Piñera. Wayne Curtis' The Great Walk was an intriguing treatise on social changes that also highlighted to me how good of a writer he is and how he has other interests besides cocktails and spirits. I rather enjoyed the cultural overview in Marni Davis' Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition and the hops-worthy overview in Breandan Kearney's The Hidden Beers of Belgium. And despite misreading this as "forager" when I first heard about it, I ended up purchasing it after a high school friend messages me to pick it up, namely The Absinthe Forger: A True Story of Deception, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Dangerous Spirit by Evan Rail. 8. Got over my dislike of competitions. Back in November 2014, I was beaten four times, twice in person and twice online, by the same bartender in 30 days especially with the Dipolomatico one where I was told that I had the best cocktail but the other bartender was more marketable. Competing in person costs money for ingredients and travel (and sometimes hotels), time off whether from relaxation or in giving up work shifts, and more. While there were positive aspects, I had also experienced a bit of negativity at competitions including trash talking that I really have no desire to be a part of. I laid off of competing save for email or web-based ones that did not require video submissions or canvassing for votes for almost 11 years. This Fall, I was tempted by the Mai Tai competition at Wusong Road and even schemed up a great recipe, but alas, I could not pull the trigger to submit a drink. However, when the Malört competition reared itself, I decided I wanted to do this to hang out with folks sick enough to love Malört that much and also for the t-shirt and other swag. I presented my Swedish Paralysis and did it up in tropical style. My goal was to make a good showing and a good drink all without nerves, and I succeeded. The judges also noted that and awarded me third place! I earned enough prize money to break even with the cost of my ingredients that included freshly made syrups and fruit juices. While second and third places were really close with a point difference, first place was awarded to the disciple of that 2014-era bartender. That part of the game did not change, but my attitude towards competitions did change and perhaps I will compete again if the theme and guidelines speak to me.

9. A good year for beer. Besides writing an article for Men's Journal on Bock and being quoted about winter beers, I visited 153 different breweries in all 6 New England States plus New York, Georgia, Oregon, and Colorado. Some memorable visits included a trip to Sasanoa Brewery on Westport Island in Maine after hearing an interview with the brewer on the All About Beer podcast about how he includes botanicals from his farm into his saisons; it was the furthest north in Maine that we had traveled for a brew. We did travel pretty far north in New Hampshire to hit Schilling, Wildbloom, and Rek-Lis. A few in Vermont like Bent Hill, Foley Brothers, and River Roost and a few in Connecticut like Fox Farm were gems. Some great first time visits were to Rejects (a punk-themed brewery), Canterbury Ale Works (with a Monty Python and British theme), Witch Doctor (where I bought Andrea a handmade voodoo zombie doll) and Dead Language Project in Connecticut, and Belleflower and Allagash in Portland. We got last beers shortly before a few closed including at Honest Weight, Smug, and Flying Dreams. I also volunteered and drank at the NERAX Cask Festival this Spring that I have worked for many seasons since my first in 2014, and I have also been enjoying cask beer at my local, the Olde Magoun Saloon, that has three cask engines flowing. 10. Bits and bobs.
The previous nine went so quickly, so here are a bunch of random things to fill the last slot. The above is the image produced by the Bartenders podcast for the session we recorded in mid-November for broadcast in mid-late February 2026. A discussion of moments in bartending, being a natural introvert and professional extrovert, and more. In USBG news, after I finished my second three year term in December 2024 with the Boston USBG chapter, I took a break due to burn out. Unfortunately, without me there, the chapter stagnated and the remaining leadership fell apart. I still went to the yearly national meeting as the only representative of the chapter (the other was Geo Thompson but he is considered part of the national board more than our chapter these days) and have been active in the national education committee. Eventually USBG National reached out if I could be on the chapter's board of directors as a placeholder and a mentor in case local leaders want to step up and guide the chapter. To kick-start things, I have organized a pair of early afternoon coffee sessions, a tour and tasting at a local distillery, and gin and aroma blending education class with Silent Pool Distillers at Darling. In addition, I had a great time giving back to the community by volunteering to work the Campari Day of Service this year at a women's shelter here in Boston and to assist at Speed Rack to help breast cancer charities. Overall, 2025 turned out to be a rather interesting year. I look forward to seeing where my new restaurant can take things, and I am anticipating a few adventures over the next 12 months. Cheers!