Nov. 16--Finally: Paul McGee opens Milk Room, the eight-seat bar in the Chicago Athletic Association hotel, at 5 p.m. Monday. (The other bars and restaurants on the property opened in July.)
The bartender, known for establishing The Whistler as a spot where $8 will nab you a darn good cocktail, is taking Milk Room in a different direction: The bar is stocked with vintage spirits from as many as 70 years ago, meaning cocktails will start at $18 and could run as much as $200 a pop, depending on how rare the base spirit is and how much the bar paid to get the bottle. Remember: With these types of spirits, often there is just one bottle.
McGee spills on some of the more interesting bottles he has right now:
1958 Campari: "Campari has changed immensely over the years. It's a lot sweeter now. It was a lot drier back then, and it had more floral characteristics to it. You can go a little bit more heavy-handed with (the older Campari) in cocktails. We'll have a cocktail that has rye whiskey and sweet vermouth and a little bit of dry vermouth and the 1958 Campari."
1960s Fernet Branca: "Back then, they would take all the botanicals and macerate them into the alcohol, whereas not long after the '60s, they started to use extracts instead of the actual botanicals. The older version is more subtle. Also, when you're talking about a 60-year-old bottle, the sugar's going to fall out a little bit. So I'm going to use that in a cocktail with rye whiskey and a little bit of sugar."
1940s Jamaican rum: "This is the bottle that I have that's really rare. It was earmarked for the British Royal Navy; it was part of their ration that they would give the sailors. This one ended up at a private collector's house and was part of his collection for years until he passed away a couple of years ago. It went to auction, and I picked it up. It literally came in a stone container that's inside of a wicker basket, just like it would have been sent to the Navy." Besides cocktails, McGee plans to offer side-by-side tastings of, say, today's Campari versus the 1958. "It's not to say that every spirit made in the past was better than it is today, but these liqueurs, they're really cool and more complex," he says. "It's just interesting to be able to taste these things side by side."
Milk Room is using Tock to book six of its seats. The last two are available for walk-in customers. Good luck. 12 S. Michigan Ave., 2nd floor, www.milkroomchicago.com.
mconrad@tribpub.com
Twitter @marissa_conrad
