For the past year-and-a-half, I’ve been spending a lot of time in Denver. Well, more specifically, I’ve been spending a lot of time here, and making the 60-mile commute into Denver after-hours to do a liquor store circuit and discovering hidden treasure here-and-there as I coast down Broadway and keep my eyes peeled. Then, making the trip back to the hotel and packing my luggage to the gills, I come home and watch the luggage carousel at Tulsa Int’l with great trepidation wondering which of the $30-60 bottles of booze will break on me and ruin, not only my clothing but my mood as well¹ . It is because of such treks and risks that I find my bar well-stocked with the likes of Carpano Antica, Punt e Mes, Leopold’s gin, Old Raj, Pappy Van Winkle 13yo Rye, Junipero, Creme de Violette and the like.

In other words, it’s been worth every trip.

I’ve been told that there’s at least one other store I need to visit and I’ll add it to this post if I find it worthy, but for now, here’s where you can find the goods in the Mile High City² :

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Divino, 1240 S. Broadway, Denver, CO 80210:
This is first-and-foremost a boutique wine store and, for the record, their selections of wine is wonderful for a store this size and you can tell the owner pays a lot of attention to the wines they carry. Fortunately, he also seems to pay attention to their spirits and liqueurs as their small selection offers some wonderful gems³ . If you see Dustin, tell him Gabriel says “hi”⁴ :
Rums:

• Westerhall’s
• Charbay Rums
• Flor de Cana Rums (almost the whole line)
• Gosling’s Family Reserve
• Oronoco White Rum

Gins:

• Leopold’s
• Jackalope
• Blackwood’s
• Junipero⁵
• Olifant
• Zuidam

Whiskey:

• Black Maple Hill Ryes and Bourbons
• Michter’s US 81 Rye
• Four Roses Bourbons
• Pappy Van Winkle’s Ryes and Bourbons
• Old Potrero Rye
• Sazerac 6yo Rye

Liqueurs/Apertifs:

• Rothman & Winter Creme de Violette
• Cynar
• Carpano Antica
• Fernet Branca and Stock’s Fernets
• Punt e Mes
• Leopold Bros. Fruit Liqueurs
• Zirbenz Alpine Liqueur

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Total Beverage, 770 E 104th Ave., Northglenn, CO 80233:
This is a monster warehouse of a liquor store. Don’t expect much in the way of customer service or knowledgeable staff walking the floor, but in terms of sheer I-could-spend-3-hours-in-here-itude it’s hard to beat. They also have a lot of unusual liqueurs and vodkas that are legitimate “old country” finds such as Krupnik Honey Liqueur (Polish), Okhotnichya, Balsam Riga, and many others. If you have the time, make the stop and get the credit card ready:
Rums:

• Sea Wynde
• Leopold’s
• Cadenhead’s Green Label
• Stroh’s 80
• Appleton Extra
• Goslings Family Reserve
• Flor de Cana Line
• J Wray & Nephew Overproof Rum

Gins:

• Damrak
• Old Raj
• Leopold’s
• Indigo
• Jackalope
• Zuidam
• Olifant
• CapRock Organic/li>

Whiskey/Rye:

• Pappy Van Winkle’s Ryes and Bourbons
• Buffalo Trace Bourbon
• Old Potrero Rye
• Eagle Rare Line
• Stranchan’s Colorado Whiskey

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Lukas Liquors, 8457 S Yosemite St. Lone Tree, CO 80124:

This is the newest consistent addition to my circuit of Denver Liquor stores and it has, by far, the largest selection of wines I’ve seen in a long time but I can’t speak to its selectivity and quality of stock. As far as spirits, the whiskey and rum sections are impressive and the gin and liqueur sections less so. Worth the visit:
Rums:

• Vizcaya 21yo
• Zaya⁶
• Flor de Cana (whole line, as far as I know)
• Stroh’s 80
• Coruba Dark Jamaican Rum
• Appleton Extra and 21yo
• Prichard’s Rum (almost the entire line)
• Oronoco White Rum

Whiskey/Rye:

• Sazerac 6yo Rye
• Buffalo Trace Bourbon
• Old Potrero Rye
• Eagle Rare Line
• Stranchan’s Colorado Whiskey
• Wild Turkey American Spirit
• Four Roses Bourbon
• Old Overholt Rye
• Pappy Van Winkle Bourbons and Ryes

Liqueurs:

• Mathilde Fruit Liqueur Line
• Leopold Bros’ Liqueur Line
• Luxardo Maraschino
• Brizard Parfait Amour
• Berentzen Apfelkorn

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For other mixers you can find Stirrings Tonic Water and Stirrings Club Soda at Total Beverage but mostly you’ll likely have to shop at your specialty food stores to find anything excitement-worthy beyond that. I’ve been told to check out Tipsy’s Liquor World and will be doing so next week. Should I find it worthy, it will be added to this post and I will be creating a “Where to Shop” area of the site for reference.

Next up, Vegas, baby!

Do you have any places in Denver or your area that you go to pick up quality, hard-to-find, or generally fantastic items? Add it in the comments and let me know!

1. thankfully, there’s only been one such incident, a bottle of Lemon Hart 151 that completely shattered in my bag. Needless to say my bag smelled like a bum in East L.A. on a warm Saturday morning. [↩]
2. note that I’m not necessarily recommending each of the products below (I’m looking at you, Sea Wynde Rum) but merely pointing out where some of the more esoteric products can be found [↩]
3. and they were willing to work with me on special-ordering Creme de Violette and now carry it full-time [↩]
4. I also managed to get them to order Batavia Arrack for me which was nice though it’s not regularly stocked [↩]
5. I highly recommend this gin [↩]
6. Trinidadian version at this point, Guatemalan is gone [↩]

Because of Oklahoma’s asinine liquor laws¹ you have to make 3-5 stops to truly restock your bar. See, here in Oklahoma (for the out-of-state crowd reading this) liquor stores aren’t allowed to sell anything non-alcoholic. That copy of “Wine Advocate” in the rack there? Why, go ahead and snag it; we can’t ring it up in this store, sir, it’s free! What, you think we sell bitters here? Why no! That would be illegal; they’re a non-alcohol product!²

This sort of thinking leads to several other oddities:

• You can’t chill products in a liquor store³
• You can’t sell 6-point beers or wines in a grocery store
• You can sell mixers in a liquor store, but only certain ones that contain X% alcohol
• There will never be a Trader Joe’s or World Market in Oklahoma so long as the restriction on wine sales through non-package store outlets remains
• 6-point beer can’t be sold after 9pm, on Sundays, on federal holidays, or election days but you can still buy 3-point beer at the grocery store

I could go on and on here but suffice it to say that this is a hell of an annoying state to a cocktailian and not least of all because there’s no incentive for grocery stores to sell higher-end syrups, mixers, and bitters when the demand is suppressed by it being a pain-in-the-arse to go one place to buy the spirits and another to buy everything else and that said difficulty causes demand and awareness of these products to be nearly non-existent. Have it shipped, you say? Don’t get me started⁴ . All that being said, the purpose of this post is to provide a guide for a few spots in Tulsa where harder-to-find ingredients may be found and put to good use (after you make the run to 3 different liquor stores, of course).

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P & V Cigar Shop and Wine Accessories, 5109 S. Lewis:
Best known for its walk-in humidor and having one of the largest cigar selections in Tulsa you can find a few mixing gems that I’ve been unable to find anywhere else in Tulsa including:

• Peychaud’s bitters
• Collins Orange bitters⁵
• Sioux City Ginger beer⁶
• Rose Flower Water
• Orange Flower Water
• Collins Orgeat Syrup
• Underberg bitters
• Barritt’s Ginger Beer

⁷

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Parkhill’s Liquor Store, 5111 S. Lewis:
This liquor store, of course, is the largest in Tusa and has some things you can’t find anywhere else, including a top-notch champagne selection. Among things you’ll find here but perhaps not elsewhere are:

• Cruzan Blackstrap Rum
• Liquor Strega
• Stock’s Maraschino Liqueur
• J. Wray & Nephew Overproof Rum
• Coruba Jamaican Rum
• Blanton’s Bourbon
• Russell Reserve Rye
• Cherry Heering

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Ranch Acres Wine & Liquor, 3324 E. 31st St.:
This is, by far, my favoritte store for wine in the Tulsa area and the people there are top-notch. While, it doesn’t carry too many things, spirits-wise, you can’t get elsewhere they have a great overall selection and some good finds:

• Wakatake Sake
• Stock’s Maraschino Liqueur
• Rogue Spruce Gin
• Whitley Neill Gin
• Citadelle Gin

(one of my favorites)

• No. 209 Gin

(I don’t really see this there anymore, but if you see it on the shelf, grab it)

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Seventy First, 11234 E. 71st St.:
I don’t make it, or care to make it, to Southside Tulsa very often but this is the store I go to get higher-end rums and rums that aren’t available elsewhere. Occasionally I’ll find a liqueur or something else unusual but for rum, especially Angostura brand, it’s the place to go:

• Angostura Gold
• Angostura 1919
• Zaya
• Pyrat 1623
• Clement Premier Canne Rum
• Russell’s Reserve Rye

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For other mixers you can find Stirrings Tonic Water and Stirrings Club Soda at Petty’s Fine Foods, Reed Ginger Beer at Whole Foods on Peoria, and Cock ‘n Bull Ginger Beer at most Reasor’s. There are also several different tonic waters at Whole Foods but I don’t recommend them at all except to generally train your palate that Schweppes’ isn’t that damned bad when it comes down to it. I’ll be adding this as a “Page” up above for continued reference and will also include a Denver-based version in the near future.

Have any places in Tulsa or your area that you go to pick up quality, hard-to-find, or generally fantastic items? Add it in the comments and let us know!

1. Liquor stores can’t open on Sunday, but I CAN go to a restaurant, have them open a bottle of wine, recork it and drive home which THEN causes me to be in violation of the “open container” law… fuckin cute [↩]
2. yes, yes, this is absurd rationale, but bitters are classified as “non-alcohol” and therefore can’t be sold [↩]
3. this leads to large beer producers selling only their 3-point beer in Oklahoma b/c the volume of sales they garner through grocery outlets, where the “non-alcoholic” beer is chilled, is so much greater [↩]
4. to have freaking TONIC WATER delivered I had to sign that 1: I was over 21 and 2: I was not currently intoxicated upon delivery [↩]
5. I do NOT recommend these, but in a pinch, hey [↩]
6. they don’t always have this, but it’s an interesting find [↩]
7. this stuff is cruddy, but it’s tough to find ginger beer in Tulsa so, in a pinch [↩]

I have three children that attend Eliot Elementary in the Tulsa Public School district and this Friday, April 25th is the annual Eliot Auction held by the Eliot PTA. Naturally, when asked if I could, 1: provide a drink idea to fit in the ‘Sky’s The Limit’ theme and 2: provide an item or idea for auction I took up the charge.

The signature drink of the auction will be the Stardust, a drink that’s not particularly my style but won the taste-testers over and was simple to make in a five-gallon batch. I made a couple of modifications to bring out and improve the peach element and, of course, I eliminated the sweet-and-sour mix, but that was about it. I’m sure by 10pm everyone will love it.

What I’m most proud of though is the “Cocktailnerd’s Guide to Better Drinking” bucket I’m donating. Valued at over $250 this is what it includes:

• Gin: Quintessential
• Vodka: 360
• Light Rum: Angostura 5 Year
• Dark Rum: Coruba Jamaican
• Vermouth: Martini & Rossi Dry and Sweet
• Applejack: Laird’s
• Cachaca: Pitu
• Misc: Lillet (blanc)
• Misc: Stock Maraschino Liqueur
• Bitters: Angostura and Peychaud’s
• Equipment: Boston shaker, wooden muddler, and OXO measuring cups
• Guidance: The Joy of Mixology, by Gary Regan and Cocktailnerd recipe/info cardset
• Mixers: Orgeat syrup, Falernum (homemade), Pimento Dram (homemade), and Grenadine (homemade)¹
• And, of course, a big “party” bucket

If you’re in or near Tulsa please come by and support our PTA as they provide a good many things for the school and students that aren’t able to be provided by TPS. My wife will be providing some of the free food (along with locally-recognized BBQ and other establishments) that you get with the $25 admission and the drink tickets are $2 apiece² . Here are the details:

The Eliot Auction (our adults-only evening) is April 25th at 7pm at the Christensen Hangar, Jones/Riverside Airport. The committee has been very busy collecting lots of great things to be sold that night. The raffle is being handled by Susie Page and will begin soon. There are still opportunities to volunteer for this event. Please contact our chairs Tim Hoss and Jeannie Farrar, with any questions or donations. This is going to be a fun party with great food and entertainment, featuring our own Jeff Turner as MC for the evening. Tickets are available at $25.00 each. Hope to see you there!

I’ll be karaoke-ing my ass off, generally making a fool of myself, and eyeballing the restored Vespa that’s up for live auction. So, keep your mitts offa it.

1. and in pretty bottles [↩]
2. I’m pretty sure about that part [↩]

As I venture further into being published locally, I felt a ‘Locals Only’ category was required for those who may visit from the articles I’ve written in the fine and magnanimous publication that has seen fit to print my musings and I will use this category to make any corrections to references I’ve made concerning local access to ingredients or expand on subjects directly related to those articles¹ .

In this last month’s article I discuss the Aviation and my personal discovery of Maraschino Liqueur² and I referenced the sole availability of Maraschino in the Tulsa area being Parkhill’s Liquor Buttpirates Mart. Funny story, that.

It was about a year and a half ago that I found Parkhill’s was the only store carrying Stock’s Maraschino within 100 miles and while I would sometimes find it missing from the shelves, within a few weeks I would see it again and relief that I would still have access to the elixir of the Aviation washed gently across me. Until recently. Literally as soon as I began writing my piece for the assignment I found that it was no longer there-an anxious hole on the shelf with a worn pricing label promising its return like some prodigal prat. And still it was missing, time after time. So, as an honest, thoughtful, and diligent youth I wrote the management of the store (or whoever answers their damned correspondence) with a heads-up that, given my guidance, patrons were likely to request Stock’s Maraschino Liqueur, that I hadn’t seen it there in some time, and that in the interest of business and mutual feel goodiness they might ought to ensure it’s available when the piece comes out. This was their response:

“Stock’s hard to get, we have Cherry Kijafa.”³

Ahem.

Underwhelming and off-putting don’t begin to describe it. And, naturally, everyone in my family and neighborhood heard about my impressions of piss-poor business practices; references to gift horses, mouths, and where exactly they could put certain unpleasant objects abounded. I was a cocktailian scorned, and I had misled my readers.

So, the correction is this: due to the efforts of my now even-more-highly-regarded mother-in-law, you can find Stock’s Maraschino Liqueur in Tulsa at Ranch Acres Wine & Spirits at 31st and Harvard. I will be looking to work with them and Old Village Wine & Spirits at 41st and Peoria to ensure any difficult to find ingredients might make their way here and/or stay stocked in anticipation of future articles. Thanks to my m-i-l and thanks to Ranch Acres for turning it around so quickly. It’s on the back wall about knee-level near where the brandies are.

Now, go make an Aviation.

1. word count is a bitch-princess of Yuggoth [↩]
2. yes, yes, I hear you chortling from here you wizened and world weary cocktailians in the audience, I know the Aviation’s been done to tears…it was the assignment dammit! Leave me be! [↩]
3. I’m only slightly paraphrasing here, mind you [↩]

I will be posting a more complete missive later today, but I just saw this through the wire and for anyone turned onto this site via my Oklahoma Magazine articles or just happening to live in the Tulsa area, I wanted to give a plug to an event you might be interested in attending:

Planned Parenthood fundraiser to feature karaoke, cocktails

Planned Parenthood of Tulsa is having a fundraising event featuring karaoke and cocktails at Club 209 on April, 2 at 6:00p. I would be there with big clanging bells on except that I’m out-of-town on a business trip and am cursing the fates that I’m unable to support such a fine organization through three things near and dear to my heart; cocktails, karaoke, and good company.

If you have a chance, please attend. $25 gets you two drinks, karaoke, and snacks and there are door prizes to boot. Seriously, I do a mean Billy Joel.

For an additional laugh, visit the link to the Tulsa World article above and read the comments. I swim in a sea of stupid.