The Missing Piece Of Our Foodie Scene

It’s just a bottle of Crème de Violette. It’s an old liqueur with a sweet and flowery fragrance that gives the century-old Aviation Cocktail the drink’s signature twilight blue hue. 

Across the country, there’s a craft cocktail revival that’s doing for mixed drinks what many of our great local restaurants have done for fine cuisine. Just as foodies have brought an end to the dark days of frozen ingredients and bland recipes, craft mixologists are banishing the high fructose sour mix and Long Island Iced Teas for gourmet-caliber cocktails that feature a creative variety of quality spirits, fresh juices, and artful combinations of complementary flavors.

A big part of this scene is rediscovering great cocktails that existed before prohibition destroyed America’s cocktail craft, along with many of the long forgotten spirits needed to craft them. The Aviation, which blends Gin, Maraschino liqueur, fresh squeezed lemon juice and Crème de Violette, is just one example of a great antique cocktail that the scene is bringing back to life.

So you haven’t heard of this craft cocktail revival?  You’re not alone.  While Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Durham have received national attention for our area’s thriving foodie scene, including tours of our top restaurants in the New York Times, we’re not even on the map in the craft cocktail community.

There’s a simple reason for the discrepancy:  That bottle of Crème de Violette, along with many more of the classic spirits used in craft cocktails, isn’t available in our government-run ABC stores.

North Carolina has a unique system of alcohol retailing, whereby the state government owns the stores and locally appointed Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) boards oversee them. In the ABC system, decisions about what you can and cannot buy statewide come from one central office at the ABC Commission in Raleigh.

If Raleigh thinks you don’t need Crème de Violette, you don’t get Crème de Violette.

Normally, in a free market economy, some passionate visionary would open a store to serve the craft cocktail community. However, selling spirits in North Carolina doesn’t work like a normal economy. It works more like the Soviet Union. Chapel Hill or Carrboro would be a perfect place for a specialty spirits shop that could become a destination for cocktailians all over the South! Picture A Southern Season for spirits. Imagine the sales tax such a store could generate.

However, there’s a group of people so fiercely opposed to privatization, any recent talk of ending our little slice of Stalinism has died a swift death in state government – and it isn’t religious conservatives.

It is, in fact, the ABC board members themselves and the local politicians who appoint them who have stopped any effort to end the government monopoly on liquor retailing, along with the perks and the privileges they themselves derive from this monopoly. Who would want to give up a job where liquor reps wine and dine you, where there’s little or no pressure to make money, or where you could steal from the company coffers with relatively little chance of getting caught?

To be clear, there is absolutely no evidence of corruption in our local Orange County ABC board. Orange County is blessed with exemplary open and trustworthy government agencies, and our ABC board is no exception. However, ABC board members in Mecklenburg, New Hanover, and Pembroke counties have all faced allegations of such corruption in recent years.

How fiercely do these political appointees guard their power? A recent bill (HB 842) that would have allowed local craft distilleries, such as Chapel Hill’s own Top Of The Hill (TOPO) distillery, to sell just one bottle of their own product once a year to a patron who toured their distillery, wasn’t even given a chance to be heard in the state senate.

These political appointees literally won’t give up the power to sell one single bottle.

Unfortunately, this small band of ABC board members and the politicians with the power to appoint them are a lot more passionate about keeping their perks and privileges than most of us are about demanding an end to the government monopoly on selling spirits.

Now, if all you want is a bottle of Jack Daniels before 9 P.M., your local monopoly ABC store will serve your needs just fine.

Meanwhile, those craft cocktail fans among us make do with whatever products some bureaucrat in Raleigh decides we deserve to purchase.

After all, it’s just a bottle of Crème de Violette.