In the Mix with Mason Bar and Kitchen

Let’s start at the beginning: How did you get into mixology and hospitality?

I was born and raised in Tahoe. My parents own a restaurant in Tahoe, a Mexican restaurant that they’ve had since 1989. So I pretty much have been in the restaurant industry since I was 9. In Tahoe, there’s a lot of nightlife. So once I turned 18, I was already working in the casinos and in Starbucks, as a barista. … and then I started working as a barback at the casinos, at Harrah’s and Harveys on the Nevada side. That’s how I got into bartending. I moved out here in 2015 and I got into Custom House and Ventana [Grill], Mr. Rick’s—all those Compass Health locations. I’ve been bartending now for eight years.

How did you end up at Mason Bar and Kitchen?

So when COVID hit … I moved back to Tahoe for a year to help my parents expand. They actually ended up expanding into a restaurant with a full bar. So I went over there to help them open the bar … and then stayed out there for the year. Then I was finally able to move back to the Central Coast because I’m in love with the Central Coast. I just called a bunch of friends and said, “OK, who’s hiring? What’s going on? Fill me in.” My friend Kyle [who I tended with at Ventana Grill] said, “Mason Bar is a good spot. … So I came here and completely fell in love with it.

How is Mason different from the other places you’ve worked?

It’s very small-town vibe. It feels more like home. … It’s almost like a family, like you’re inviting somebody into your home and it’s awesome. I’ve done bartending where it’s more like downtown and the cocktails are a little bit faster pace. Mason Bar is more food oriented, I would say. It’s more of a restaurant vibe. But it’s definitely one of the most difficult bars I’ve worked at. It’s just the volume. … We are pumping out so many cocktails and so many drinks that we’re just going and going, and it’s more than two-step cocktails. It’s a little bit more difficult, but it’s cool because you feel successful at the end of your shift. You just get your butt kicked, but it’s like, “OK, that was worth it.” And it’s a good vibe. We get a lot of locals.

One thing I’ve always wondered about when I eat here is all of the casks behind the bar. Can you explain those and how they work?

Those are personal aged barrels. We’re more of a whiskeybased bar, so we have five cocktails that we make in house here, and we age [the cocktails] in barrels upstairs. Then we offer them to the guests after about six to eight weeks. You pick a cocktail—for example, we have a Maple Old

Fashioned—you personalize your own plaque, and when you come in it’s already prepaid for you. It’s really cool because every barrel has its own oak and you get different flavors while it sits in there.

How do you sign up for a barrel?

We have a form that you fill out with your name, what you like, which cocktail you’re interested in. You are more than welcome to upgrade the bourbon, although the pricing would be different, and add whatever you want. We also let you taste the five different cocktails we make in house, so you can … see which one you like best. We have the Manhattan, the Maple Old Fashioned, the 227, the Negroni, and the Boulevardier. I love our 227; that’s my personal favorite. The Maple Old Fashioned is great, too, and it sells a lot.

So what’s your official role at Mason?

I just took over the bar managing position so I’m helping create more of the drink menu. We’re coming up with new cocktails [for the season]; we all come together as a team and have all of the bartenders come up with cocktails and offer our input. We pick a basic cocktail and we all edit it and try to figure out which way tastes the best. It’s cool to see everyone’s brains coming together and experimenting with flavors.

It’s almost like chemistry.

It is almost like chemistry. I’ve talked about this with other bartenders—it’s almost like building a puzzle. You’re putting all these chemicals together and it has to be that perfect taste or that perfect count or the ounces have to be exactly on point. If not, it doesn’t taste the same. It’s not consistent. That’s one of the biggest challenges.

What happens when it goes wrong?

When you don’t [make a drink right], you can tell. If you’re taste testing drinks, you’ll say, “That has too much lemon, or that’s too much lime, or that’s so sweet,” or you forgot something. Or the color isn’t right. When you start recognizing if something looks right, tastes right, or doesn’t look right, it is pretty cool. Because a lot of people come in and they don’t just want a shot of alcohol. They actually want something that tastes good.

With Spring and Summer coming up, a lot of people are looking for seasonal flavors. What kinds of drinks do you recommend?

You’d definitely want something more refreshing. We always lean toward margaritas. I love making fresh margaritas! Right now we’re going to put a new mango habanero margarita on our menu, which is really tasty.

How do you make the perfect margarita?

The biggest thing is making stuff at home. I think, a lot of times, people try to buy the mixes or they try to buy the syrups, but our habanero agave we make in house. We buy the agave and we boil the habaneros and make an actual syrup out of it. A fresh margarita is so different than a margarita mix. Like, for example, we don’t use any orange liqueur in our margaritas. A lot of people mix orange liqueur in there, which I feel almost takes away from the taste of the tequila or the lime.

What other Spring and Summer drinks do you like?

I also like gin cocktails in the summer. A good gin cocktail is really tasty. We’re coming up with one, it’s called Cleo’s Hound. So it’s just lime juice, grapefruit juice, St. Germaine—which is an elderberry liqueur—so it gives it that herbally flavor—and then the gin. In the summertime, it’s all about citrus. As a kid, you love fresh-squeezed lemonade. As an adult, it’s margaritas and pina coladas. I know there’s a lot of different fruits that are in season in the summertime, and you kind of just go with that because you’re not going to have something pumpkinbased in the summer, you know?

Any tips for aspiring mixologists trying to make cocktails at home?

The biggest thing is to make ingredients at home instead of buying everything. Almost like when you’re cooking. … It’s the same thing as it is in the bar with the freshest ingredients. We order our ingredients daily, every day. A lot of times you have to make sure that you pick a cocktail or even a liqueur or alcohol that you can get at that time because something’s out of stock.

Speaking of ingredients, what’s your favorite cocktail to make?

I love making sours. …They’re time consuming, but they taste so good and they just look so pretty. People are in awe when you serve them. For example, a whiskey sour is made with an egg white, so you’re actually cracking an egg and putting it in the shaker and people are looking at it saying, “Why are you putting an egg in there?” And then you shake it—wet shake it, dry shake it—and then you get this nice layer of frothiness on top that makes it almost creamy. And it’s versatile—you can do a whiskey sour, you can do a gin sour, a tequila sour.

So walk us through making a bourbon sour.

I like to make them in a coupe glass, but you can also make it over a large rock or over a small rock. Grab your shaker, a large shaker, and crack the egg and get the yolk out but leave the egg white in there. Then put your bourbon in there. I love using Basil Hayden, which is a really good bourbon to mix. It’s not too expensive, not too cheap. We do a two-ounce pour here—that’s our normal pour—and about half an ounce of lemon juice, half an ounce of turbinado, which is a brown sugar. Some people like to use syrup or half and half, but I love turbinado. The brown sugar with the bourbon is really tasty. And then you have to dry shake it and wet shake it.

That means first you dry shake it with no ice … and then you put the ice in there and wet shake it. You’re kind of blending the egg whites. So you have to do a hard shake. It takes a while to get the frothiness. Then after that, you double strain it into the glass, and once it settles, that’s when all of the frothiness starts floating to the top and you get the layers. And then sprinkle Ambassador bitters, which are aromatic bitters, on top and add a garnish.

Last question… and everyone wants to know: To blend or not to blend?

I would not blend. Yeah, we don’t even have a blender here [at Mason]. I’m sure we have one in the kitchen, but we don’t blend at the bar. There are places I’ve been to, like my parents’ restaurant, where we actually have a margarita machine that blends the drinks and I think those are delicious. But actually having a blender, it almost feels like it takes away from the consistency of the drinks. It’s not smooth or consistent.

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

We talked about your favorite drink to make. What’s your favorite drink to drink?

I love Cadillac margaritas! I love fresh-squeezed margaritas and Cadillac margaritas. … I just think it’s this perfect combination of the lime and the orange. It’s so good. I love citrus. But it has to be fresh squeezed. It’s hard to go places and order Cadillac margaritas because I know how to make a good one.