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Mike Wolf isn’t here to tell you what to drink. But the longtime Nashville bartender and general manager/partner of East Nashville’s Chopper definitely has some thoughts on how you should be doing it.
In his debut cocktail book, Garden to Glass: Grow Your Drinks from the Ground Up, Wolf takes home bar enthusiasts right into the heart of a movement that’s bringing the natural world into cocktails—much in the same way that farm-to-table cooking revolutionized the food world years ago.
The idea for the book came during his time as the head bartender of Husk, where he was encouraged by chef Sean Brock to bring his appreciation of nature into his day job.
“Coming from Colorado, biking through Shelby Park here in Nashville was like exploring a completely different country,” Wolf says. “There were plenty of things growing down there that I'd never seen before, so I started doing research on what those plants were. I really came to admire the beautiful, overflowing gardens I saw around Middle Tennessee and began using herbs and flowers for garnishes in cocktails.”
In Garden to Glass, Wolf makes a strong argument for growing your own garden and using its hyper-fresh bounty as a way to elevate your cocktail. From garden planning to spotlight chapters on herbs, vegetables, and fruits, the book offers tips and tricks on preserving ingredients, cocktail presentation, and foraging, as well recipes for making syrups, cordials, and bitters. Along the way, Wolf shares personal anecdotes from his time in the industry and his experience tending a home garden, where he grew upwards of 30 different varieties of herbs and vegetables.
But one of the most important takeaways of the book, Wolf says, is realizing that your garden is part of something much larger.
“If I can inspire people to grow an herb or two on their windowsill and start looking at a few small plants they can grow as a bigger part of the whole universe, then that would be pretty cool,” he says. “If that's too ambitious, maybe folks could start looking at everyday plants like dandelions and violets and begin seeing how beneficial and resilient they are. Plants can teach us a lot.”
RECIPE
One of Wolf’s favorite recipes in Garden to Glass is the Wild Berry Sherry Cobbler. In fact, rumor has it that this highly-sippable cocktail helped popularize the straw. But as Wolf cautions, “take care not to drink it all in 30 seconds.”
Wild Berry Sherry Cobbler
1 teaspoon superfine sugar
2 lemon peels, with as little pith as possible
4 unripened mulberries, black raspberries or blackberries, plus more for garnish
3 ounces Amontillado, Manzanilla, or Fino Sherry
1 sprig of mint, for garnish
In a shaker tin, lightly muddle the sugar, lemon peels, and berries, then add the sherry and stir a little to incorporate. Add some crushed ice and a few cubes to your shaker and shake until well chilled and frosty. Double strain over crushed ice, garnish with more berries and a large sprig of mint, and serve with a compostable straw.