Should you choose to tune-in to Drinking Made Easy on AXS TV in 2013, I can almost guarantee three things will happen: You will have a good laugh, you will crave a good drink, and you will envy the life of host Zane Lamprey, who has made a career out of bar hopping with his buddies—wingman Steve McKenna and monkey mascot Pleepleus.
BB: You just finished up season three of Drinking Made Easy. What drinking cities did you visit and what were some highlights?
ZANE: There’s a bunch of them. We started off going down to Houston and San Antonio, and it’s interesting because when you hit major cities like New York, LA, Chicago, San Francisco, even Miami, you expect some of the craft cocktail scene because there’re so many places around. But when you go to these smaller places, you realize that it’s not just a small thing, it’s a big thing, and every city is well-represented. Cities like Boise and Syracuse and places like that have great mixology programs and things going on, too. So when we went down and hit Houston and San Antonio, that’s what we saw. There were so many opportunities to get the Prohibition-style, pre-Prohibition-style, speakeasy-style experience. The word ‘mixology’ and what these people have decided to do is take their craft more seriously than just slinging drinks. They’re coming up with unique ways of serving classic cocktails or ways of inventing something altogether, so that’s really where I distinguish the bartender from the mixologist, is that the bartenders mix their drinks and move high-volume, which is completely viable; but then there’s the mixologist that is coming up with new drinks and putting spins on classics. So when we went down to San Antonio and Houston we saw a lot of that, and even in Baton Rouge, coming up through Indianapolis and Louisville, for sure. Turns out it’s not just about drinking bourbon in Louisville. It’s how can they make their experience in a bar different than someone else’s experience. That’s what makes our job easier and I think what ultimately helps out these bars with our appearance or visit is when they have something unique to present or a unique spin on something or even, quite frankly, when they’re passionate about what it is that they are doing. Then it’s much easier for us to spotlight them and what they’re doing and justify us going there and saying, ‘Hey, here’s why we’re here. This place has such great cocktails, a new spin on their cocktail.’ I think the other thing is when they utilize local ingredients, like a Bloody Mary mix called Hoosier Momma in Indianapolis. Or when we were in Indianapolis and these guys are making sorghum rum out of sorghum that’s harvested by local Amish. They’re making this spirit that’s unique and it really helps out peoples’ menus. It helps our experience when people can really have something that’s unique and ties in locally.
BB: Based on your travels and experiences this season, what are some of the best trends you’re seeing in the bar business right now?
ZANE: Well, the two hottest trends right now are the mixology program and craft beer, and I think that’s it. As far as offshoots of that, it would be local sourcing. Everyone is looking for that local thing. For example, when I go into a bar—anywhere—I’m going to probably try the local beer first. I’m in L.A. now, and I’ve tried every local beer out here, so when I visit some small town or big city I want to try what they have locally, and craft beer is really the best way to do that. There’s obviously way more opportunities to have craft beer than there is to have a local spirit distilled nearby, but then the locals start to take hold of even that. I’ve seen this many times, when someone comes out with a beer and they want to go national with it, they have a difficult time getting this huge, watered-down group of people to grasp onto their beer. But if you can get the local community going? Take something like the Maui Brewing Company. I mean, Maui was served in Maui, you know? Maui was a Hawaiian beer, but they won over the locals and they won over the tourists and now it’s really infiltrated the rest of the country, so people can do this, you know? There’s a huge list, like Stone Brewing, for instance. They got the support of the locals and then they exploded onto the national scene.
