THE BOOZY BACKSTORY Christine Sismondo

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Ada Coleman bartending at the Savoy, circa 1920 - Public Domain

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Mallory O’Meara, author of Girly Drinks

In one of the earliest scenes in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, the fi lm’s main character, Patrizia Reggiani, orders up a Tanqueray martini at the bar of a lively party in Milan.

It’s a fateful moment, especially for the man caught behind the bar, who turns out to be none other than Maurizio Gucci (yes, that Gucci), who would fall in love with and marry Reggiani. Don’t cheer. She’s kind of a gold-digger. And they do not live happily ever after.

Gin is also an interesting choice for a character so tightly defi ned by class, gender, and morality, especially given the spirit’s history. Long after England’s 18th century “Gin Craze,” this liquor was irretrievably associated with poverty, debauchery, and fallen women.

“One of the things about the gin craze that’s most notable is its feminine identity,” says Mallory O’Meara, author of Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol. “It was called ‘Mother’s Ruin’ and ‘Mother Gin,’ and it got that identity because people were so scandalized by women drinking it.”

So scandalized, in fact, that many thought women’s new drinking habits would cause the downfall of society. But there was more to this moral panic, circa the fi rst half of the 1700s, than just gin joints.

“It was really the fi rst time in London that there were lots of young, single, independent

She adds: “Let’s give people the basics of life and then maybe we can worry about that other stuff .”

women rushing to the city, trying to fi nd jobs and having free time and money to spend on things like gin,” she continues. “What’s really clear is that it wasn’t so much that women were drinking more than men, it’s just that they were drinking at all.”

It was also the fi rst time that a spirit was aff ordable and widely available. Prior to the mid-1700s, most people in England drank beer. A combination of lowered taxes for distillers and short-cuts made a pint of gin cheaper than a pint of beer.

O’Meara points out, however, that the real social upheaval of the era was caused more by the rapid growth of the City of London than cheap gin. But it was easier to focus on the “low-hanging fruit”—gin—than, say, housing, medical care, or adequate schools for children.

Funnily enough, O’Meara and I actually “met” (virtually) last year, when we were both asked to be guest experts on an NPR show about women and alcohol in the pandemic. We were surprised how many callers were concerned about “wine moms,” who we found ourselves in the position of defending.

“We still see people doing the same thing today when they say we have to stop people from drinking so much and it’s just completely upside-down,” says O’Meara. “I feel like that should be so far down our list of priorities. Maybe we should get people healthcare and housing and reliable income.”

HANKY-PANKY

We could off er up a recipe for a Martini here, but it’s worth pointing out that Maurizio is a terrible bartender—he shakes this simple classic where he should have stirred. So, instead, we’re wrapping up this column with the Hanky-Panky, a drink invented by Ada Coleman, a trail-blazing bartender who ran the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London from 1903 to 1925. Coleman is the subject of an entire chapter in O’Meara’s new book and, unlike Mr. Gucci, she knew when to shake and when to stir.

1½ oz gin 1½ oz sweet vermouth ¾ oz Fernet-Branca 1 orange twist (for garnish)

Add all liquid ingredients to an ice-fi lled mixing glass and stir for 45 seconds. Strain and pour into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a twist of orange.

Christine Sismondo, PhD, is an historian and the author of America Walks into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops; Mondo Cocktail: A Shaken and Stirred History; and, most recently, Canadian Spirits: The Essential Cross-Country Guide to Distilleries, Their Spirits and Where to Imbibe Them (with Stephen Beaumont). Sismondo also acts as Canada’s Academy Chair for The World’s Best 50 Bars and as a judge for the World Gin Awards. Christine lives in Toronto and is working on a new book about cocktails and art. Her cocktail of choice is a Pisco Sour.

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Christopher Wilton

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Julia Coney Tahiirah Habibi

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic and a ‘racial reckoning’ instigated by the senseless murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor swept across the world.

Recognition of the daily racism experienced by Black people became a catalyst for change. In the wine industry, the charge has been led spiritually and intellectually by several inspirational Black women who sought to revolutionize access and education in the wine world, calling out the wine industry for its lack of inclusion of Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC). This group of educators and experienced wine professionals includes Julia Coney (Black Wine Professionals), Tahiirah Habibi (The Hue Society and The Roots Fund), and Ashtin Berry (Radical Xchange), to name a few. Would-be gatekeepers quickly promised a fundamental rethink and wider partnership in the industry, but how much has really changed in the wine world since 2020?

As I write, the worst of the pandemic appears to be behind us; restaurants in Canada and further afield have reopened for business. But post-2020, I wonder if the racial reckoning has really delivered on its promises? I am a sommelier and wine director in one of Canada’s top fine dining restaurants with more than 15 years’ experience in hospitality. Nonetheless, during dinner service and as I go about my business, I am still frequently reminded that as a Black man I am an oddity in this environment. Where are you from? You speak so eloquently! How do you know so much about wine? Where did you go to school? These are just a few examples of some of the more ‘innocent,’ but nonetheless quietly insidious questions that I am confronted with almost daily.

Christopher Wilton, a sommelier, consultant, and wine educator in Peterborough, Ontario, explains that with these types of questions, “what is happening is an establishment of a relationship of power. The white person is questioning the fact that you are not from here or if you really belong in this space, as you don’t ‘look’ like one of us.” It is assumed, in short, that wine is a “white” (and predominantly male) space. Wilton elaborates on this point with greater clarity: “the sommelier occupies a dynamic space in the restaurant hierarchy. A sommelier has a specialized technical knowledge. When you are a Black sommelier you also execute and present in a manner that could be interpreted as equating to ‘whiteness’ even to a white person, and frankly quite often [more intelligently] than the average white person.” Despite all the professed awareness of the last 2 years, the continued frequency of these questions reflects the reality of being BIPOC in Canada, where the experience of racism is subtle and entrenched in notions of exceptionalism.

Sadly, it is not just in the restaurant or tasting room that the intelligence, knowledge, and humanity of the BIPOC wine professional comes under scrutiny. Microaggressions often begin in the classroom through instructors, educators and curriculum, and even continue with mentors and peers in the industry. As Beverly Crandon, a certified sommelier based in Toronto and a co-founder of VinEquity, which focuses on advocacy, equity, and scholarship for the BIPOC wine community, told me recently, for BIPOC, a racist encounter “sneaks up on you and makes you realize how others see you. Women, especially women of colour are viewed as “party tricks” at wine events, especially in rooms with the ‘highly educated elite.’” As in so many other fields, systemic racism is baked into the wine industry at every level.

The reality is that the challenges of racism we face today in the wine world are very much the same challenges of yesterday. Dorothy Gaiter, the prominent New Yorkbased wine journalist, author, and critic, has

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Beverly Crandon

witnessed the growth of the US wine industry in the current era. She espouses a big picture perspective in her view that “diversity, equity and inclusion in an industry is not charity,” it is “plain good business sense…addressing all individuals in meaningful and lasting ways… will equate to businesses surviving and growing by appealing to as many markets as possible.” This way of thinking requires good faith and participation on a real, human level, but outside of the BIPOC community there have been few progressive shifts in the industry, and regrettably these have been mostly token efforts. As Ashtin Berry, a New Orleans-based hospitality activist, writer, and educator, puts it “People [have] tried to copy-paste equity into their structures without questioning why their structures were so white in the first place!”

It will come as no surprise that the gatekeepers of the wine world have historically been, and in many cases continue to be, white people. They control and decide upon the quality of language employed in a classroom, the choice of the instructors, the content that is delivered and how, and ultimately who deserves a pass and what constitutes a fail for accreditation. After many years of working, teaching, and training in the wine industry, it is clear to me that despite plenty of well-meaning statements of allyship and promised change, this code was one that was never designed to be broken.

It is this realization that must inform how we as BIPOC in this industry now approach the future of the wine world. Although we can begin by questioning leadership, the ‘gatekeepers,’ and asking why there is continued resistance to change, Berry, for one, has made clear that she “can’t be concerned with their fears” and that “centering them in this conversation” is the problem for the advancement of BIPOC. Instead, we ‘‘must understand that we are all adults in this conversation, ‘white people’ are responsible for their own feelings. Their weaponized incompetence is no longer acceptable!”

Yes, gatekeepers are at the root of resistance to significant change, but pressure is much better concentrated elsewhere. As Wilton puts it, “White people need to challenge white people.” There can be no real change in the gatekeeper community until it happens behind those closed gates.

This brings us to the classroom and the institutions for wine education that provide certification. The Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET) and the Court of Master Sommelier (CMS) are two of the most prominent of these, but there are many other international partner organizations, including colleges and universities, that offer general and specialized education in wine and use the WSET or CMS as their standard. When I returned to wine school last January to upgrade my certification, I was shocked that by-and-large the instructors, though accomplished wine professionals, were often not thoughtful educators. The syllabus did not aim to enlighten or clarify, it did not reflect the world outside the classroom. Instead it seemed in many cases to fall just short of a marketing text. Fifteen years ago, I was the only person of colour to graduate from my wine certification course. Although the student body now spans all spectrums of race and identity, their experiences and interests are noticeably absent from the curriculum, and the teaching style has remained more or less the same as when I first began. This is a problem.

I raised this issue with Beverly Crandon. She believes that, especially in Canada, “educators should look like the audience, the student body. Even like the outside world.” A truism which bears repeating is that diversity in instruction can create trust, credibility, and safe spaces in the classroom. It helps immensely when instructors and mentors have similar lived experiences to the students they are teaching. Dorothy Gaiter has observed that enrollment in wine institutions has been on the rise everywhere in the last 2 years, and “…that for many BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people, these certifications serve as a sort of armor that they feel they need to work in the wine industry.” A useful armour indeed, especially when dealing with micro-aggressive table-side questions, dismissiveness from a peer, or more generally when navigating an industry that is so heavily associated with white Europeanness.

Armour aside, the question of whether these institutions are still relevant and whether wine accreditation is delivered as education or indoctrination, remains a pertinent one. Ashtin Berry again offers a response. She tells me that it is “essentially a hierarchy of schools of thoughts, that give you entrance into a fraternity…if it doesn’t

Chasity Cooper

teach a full history and have a range of models relevant to the regions then it’s indoctrination.” Though Berry is not entirely against classroom education, she is quick to point out that considerable resources are available to help the aspiring wine professional learn successfully on their own. Chasity Cooper, for instance, is not convinced that institutional wine education was necessary for her.

Chasity is a Chicago-based certified sommelier, wine writer, and journalist. She admits that although certification on her way up gave her “the tools to navigate and translate the language of wine to her many different audiences,” she tells me she would not do it again without first seeing significant changes in the curriculum. Beverly Crandon puts it more bluntly “… going to wine school is useless if only for a certificate you earn so you can just talk to one another. One needs to take that information, process and apply it in meaningful ways.” In other words, we should be addressing the difference between an education that elevates and an accreditation that merely indoctrinates.

When we speak of indoctrination in wine education, the elephant here, as it always is when we discuss such dyed-in-the-wool notions of ‘elite’ culture, is the whiteness in the room. The bottom line is that some of what is currently being taught in wine institutions is no longer relevant in a post-2020 world and certainly not without institutional change. Berry again: “Are these institutions and instructors willing to ‘acknowledge that colonialism is an integral component of the history of wine?’ Are these institutions capable of ‘reassessing the [disproportionate] valuations they have given to different regions?”

Decolonizing wine’s rigid and biased language as well as its non-European history requires transparency and an acknowledgement that wine’s culture and past is not “neutral” or apolitical. Being transparent also means that at a minimum we acknowledge the African slave labour on which port towns such as Bordeaux and Nantes relied to gain their economic head start during the 1700s; we discuss that wine production on the Canary Islands in the 1500s displaced its indigenous inhabitants; and we recognize and accept that the transatlantic ships that brought Madeira wine to America also carried ‘cargo’ more precious and more poignant than wine.

As in society and education at large, there is also a history of misinformation and whitewashing in wine education that should be countered. Language, for instance, is a hot topic in the world of wine. There is growing acknowledgement that the tasting notes that we are currently tested against and are forced to assimilate to, are working at a deficit. Most of the citrus fruits (Middle Eastern), cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla spice (South Asian) and countless other tasting notes and flavours do not originate in “white” Western food world history. They are appropriated or shared. To tell someone that they don’t taste cinnamon when they may have spent their whole life tasting cinnamon in other contexts, borders on the absurd. Reflecting more deeply upon these accepted interpretations and developing new variations in how we talk about taste is one concrete way to challenge the language of wine and the exclusionary Eurocentrism within the culture.

In both the United States and Canada, BIPOC are organizing and preparing for a more inclusive wine industry with or without the self-appointed “gatekeepers.” In Canada, organizations such as Vinica in British Columbia and VinEquity in Toronto are taking action to effect permanent change. Through these and many sister organizations in the United States we will begin to shift the language and culture of learning within wine institutions and break down the barriers to true inclusivity. There is more wine being made and consumed than ever before and there is room for everyone. As we know, there is strength in numbers – diversity from the ground up is the key.

Christopher Sealy is the wine director for the alo food group. Christopher has been with the group since late 2015 when alo, the flagship restaurant, began to garner national and international attention as Canada’s premier fine dining tasting-menu only and wine pairing restaurant. Alo currently sits at #90 on the San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants. In 2019, Christopher was voted #1 Sommelier by Canada’s 100 Best. He is a mentor for Vinequity, an organization which aims to amplify the voices of Black, Indigenous, People of Colour and LGBTQ+, in the Canadian wine community.

STORYTELLING THROUGH ICE CREAM

By Neema Syovata

To experience Brooklyn-based Malai Ice Cream is to be transported to the nostalgic flavors of India that Pooja Bavishi grew up with. Partake in her stories in which ice cream with flavors such as agate candy saffron, jaggery with tamarind caramel, and sweet roti and ghee is the medium and delight your senses with a “decadent blend of cream and culture.”

Photo credit: Morgan Ione Yeager

As a first generation Indian American, her creations are inspired by nostalgic childhood flavors, cultural heritage, and her family’s food traditions. Growing up in ‘90s North Carolina, Bavishi was drawn to the kitchen at an early age, particularly by the sounds and aromas of her mother’s chai making each morning. At the age of 10, she remembers baking a white chocolate cheesecake for her family. “The thing that I remember most is the fact that I cut this cheesecake while it was still warm, which is the biggest no-no ever. I gave it to my parents and my sister and I can still remember, however many decades later now, that their faces lit up. They were like ‘This is so good, Pooja.’ So, I made this connection early on that if you make something with your heart and soul, it’s really going to make people happy.”

What was your inspiration for starting Malai?

My parents are immigrants from India, so Malai in Gujarati translates to “cream of the crop.” I grew up with a nostalgia for the India of my parents. I think because it was an experience that I didn’t get to feel and breathe much in the same way, or at least in a way that I was craving. My parents who were entrepreneurs themselves encouraged me to start my own business. At the time I didn’t feel that I had the business acumen, so I decided to enroll in NYU Stern School of Business.

They had gifted me an ice cream maker when I moved to New York, and it was just kind of sitting there. My sister and I always joked that growing up, whenever we moved apartment to apartment, my mom always came and stocked our kitchen - so there was always a section that

Rose with cinnamon roasted almonds ice cream

Photo credit: Morgan Ione Yeager

Have people been more or less receptive to your flavors of ice cream?

we called the Indian side. It had things that, you know, allowed us to make our comfort foods. In November of 2014, I held this annual vegetarian friends-giving and made ice cream for the first time, pulling spices from there [the Indian side]. I actually think that was just these two sides of me that were finally coming together. Here I was with this concept where I always was so nostalgic for my parents’ upbringing, for India, and to tell that story of mine. And this was a perfect way for me to do it.

Why eggless ice cream?

There are two reasons for that. First, when I was tinkering with different formulas, I wanted to highlight these spices and flavors that hadn’t been present in mainstream ice cream before, and I found that the egg yolks muddled the flavors. Secondly, my parents come from a part of India where a huge portion of the population is vegetarian and they don’t consider eggs to be vegetarian. I felt strongly that I didn’t want to pull from my cultural background and then make these products inaccessible to that population. I also made the decision that everything coming out of the Malai kitchen, whether that’s our ice cream, baked goods or anything else would be eggless.

How do you develop new flavors?

It really depends, but all of these flavors are meant to tell a story. I’m not just trying to throw things together and call it Indian-inspired. I am also passionate about my heritage and culture, and very conscious when telling my story because I’m not trying to be a representative of all Indian Americans. The only story that I know in this world is mine and that is a story that I’m telling. Now, I do believe that people feel a lot of connection to my stories. I’m also very intentional as it’s about smells, tastes, touch. All of the senses that are really active when you’ve grown up in a multicultural household.

As an example, for Diwali (which is the Indian New Year), my family makes a pastry called ghughra (it contains milk powder, sugar, nuts and cardamom). I wanted to translate that into an ice cream because it was/is such a deep-rooted part of my family’s culture. I wanted that to be really present in our Diwali offerings and so we actually make a lightly spiced cardamom ice cream and we put the ghughra filling throughout. The masala chai flavor is made with the exact same spice blend that was created by my grandmother and so that for me is very memory forward. The carrot halwa flavor is inspired by my father who enjoys carrot halwa with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, so it’s the best of both worlds.

I think they are really receptive. Because these are flavors that I grew up with, I wanted to make them really accessible to people. There was this cake that we developed a couple of years ago, that we call the Gulab jamun ice cream cake now. Gulab jamun is like a milk-based donut that’s soaked in a syrup. It often has flavorings of saffron, cardamom or rose. We make this eggless cake that’s saffron syrup soaked and we put our rose with cinnamon roasted almond ice cream in between the layers. It is extremely popular. But when we debuted it, we actually called it saffron syrup-soaked ice-cream cake. And then very quickly, I was like you know what, I created this based on a Gulab jamun, so we should call it a Gulab jamun ice cream cake! Our customers will come in and ask questions about what is ghughra ice cream or shrikhand frozen yogurt? And that is something I am happy to both talk about and explain, and the same goes for our team.

SIGNATURE COLLECTION

Has there been tension or conflict in balancing what you want to expose people to from a flavor/cultural context and what you thought people would be accepting of?

I think that our ice cream is not for everyone, and I knew that from the very beginning. I know who our audience is, and our audience knows us. They understand exactly what we’re trying to do and exactly what our brand represents. So, I don’t think that there’s a tension there.

When I first started in July of 2015, I had literally just graduated from business school and I sold my first scoop two weeks later at a street fair, pushing a chest freezer. Orange fennel was one of my first flavors that I created. This woman bought a scoop and then walked away, and then I saw her kind of do a complete 180 and walk back towards me. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I pulled the cash back out of the cash drawer and prepared to hand it to her because I was sure that she hated it. Instead, she came back and said “I just want to let you know that my Italian grandmother used to make orange and anise cookies, and I haven’t had this flavor since she’s passed. I just wanted to thank you.” That was one of my very first [business] memories and an embodiment of what we’re trying to do at Malai.

Is your business seasonal or do people line up for your ice cream all year round?

Ice cream is always a little seasonal, with our first quarter being the slowest. At the moment, we only have the one store in Brooklyn, but we also sell to grocery stores and our shipping part of the business really took off due to the pandemic. I will add that as a business owner, and as a person, it [the pandemic] taught me a lesson in resilience and grit in a way that I hadn’t experienced before. It also showed me how strong this community of food businesses and food entrepreneurs really is. I definitely felt the support.

What can we expect from you next?

There are some exciting things in the future, so stay tuned. The one thing I can say, is that we want to expand and develop Malai as a global brand. I love the idea of getting Malai to as many people as possible.

Neema Syovata is a food writer, researcher, and photographer, who lives in an idyllic hamlet in the northeastern USA, by way of Nairobi, Kenya. She is obsessed with all things food and spends a lot of time thinking about the future of modern African cuisine and, also, how to create a more inclusive space for BIPOC to tell their culinary stories. She is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Gastronomy from Boston University to aid in that goal. In her spare time, she can be found backyard foraging, conducting culinary experiments, and drinking lots of chai. These signature collection ice creams are eggless (therefore not made from a custard base), but not vegan. While the mouthfeel may not be as luxurious, it doesn’t detract at all from the sensorial experience.

Rose with Cinnamon Roasted Almonds

One of Malai’s most popular flavors, and for good reason. The floral notes are balanced with an unexpected but welcome variance in texture from the cinnamon roasted almonds, making this a most delectable sensorial experience.

Orange Fennel

Fennel seeds are ubiquitous in Indian cuisines and are often served as a digestive. With this ice cream, the anise-like flavor of the fennel is tempered by the citrus to produce a bright, zesty-yet-light flavor with a delightful crunch from the seeds that is reminiscent of a beautiful spring day.

Mango & Cream

This ice cream conjures memories of eating a ripe mango with the juices dripping down one’s arm in a tropical climate that is pure sunshine. A combination of tart and sweet with a creamy finish, it is sure to delight the palate.

Masala Chai

If you have ever wanted to experience chai in ice cream form, well here’s your chance. A masala spice blend that belonged to Pooja’s mother is used to create that all too familiar feeling of the warmth and spiciness that is characteristic of chai. It has a finish with notes of cinnamon, cardamom and ginger that linger leaving you wanting more, for the joys of chai drinking are beautifully captured here.