A whiskey adventure for you and me.
This is important. The resurgence of craft cocktails is due to the insistence of bartenders who believed, above all, that a drink should be poured with quality ingredients and with a fanatical level of care. This ushered in waves of enthusiasts (you among them) who then attempted to mimic the classics, or adapt, refine, and reinvent. All of this mixing and infusing and wild experimenting was accomplished by a fleet of bartenders nationwide, many of whom are getting by without basic healthcare. (But let’s not get into that discussion at the bar.)
Chief among those bartenders is Murray Stenson, a cocktail purist. He is an institution in Seattle, where he’s tended bar down at Zig-Zag Cafe and Canon. He’s held “Best Bartender” from 2010, though the title is rendered superfluous once you’ve tried one of his cocktails; you needn’t be told to know. Yet he, too, lacks health insurance. After an after-work accident revealed a weakened heart valve, Murray faces harrowing medical debts.
Local bars swiftly orchestrated MurrayAid. Throughout Seattle, then the nation, even still the world, the proceeds of cocktail nights were pooled together to fund Murray’s heart surgery and recovery. The events revealed the community beyond simply mixing ingredients in a glass to produce a taste; beyond all else is a reverence that admits there are real, hard-working, damn good people.
