QUENCH
Craig Rudewicz, co-founder, Crude Bitters
FINE FLAVORS Cocktail culture gets the classroom treatment at The Bittery by CATHERINE CURRIN
H
ead south down Davie Street, and you can’t miss the bubble-gum-pink building that’s home to The Bittery. Husbandand-wife team Craig Rudewicz and Lindsay Lasserre founded Crude Bitters in 2012, the first bitters company in North Carolina, and have since expanded to sell in 40 states, as well as Australia. “The North Carolina beer industry had expanded like crazy, and cocktail culture was growing,” says Rudewicz.
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photography by TAYLOR MCDONALD
“We wanted to be involved in the industry and provide a product to showcase cocktails in general. Cocktail history is a passion of ours and bitters are intertwined throughout its culture.” To many, the world of bitters is opaque: Those mysterious dropper bottles look medicinal, and what’s in there, anyway? In fact, the potent liquid—it’s technically deemed a food product—began as a healing remedy in the 1800s. Intended to aid in digestion, the highly concentrated spirits were infused with
herbs, spices and other botanicals. Today, bitters have become “the salt and pepper of the cocktail world,” says Rudewicz, enhancing the nature of a standard liquor cocktail. “Our bitters specialize in blends of flavors, rather than single flavors, so we try and think of combinations that would complement a certain spirit or cocktail.” Crude Bitters has a concoction for virtually everyone, with names like ‘Bitterless Marriage,’ a blend of hibiscus, lavender and oak; ‘Rizzo,’ a combina-
