Chewing the Fat: Prohibition Hangover Author Garrett Peck
Garrett Peck, author of 'The Prohibition Hangover'
Why abstinence was so important to her, and why that thinking hadn’t been passed down through the generations to Peck’s mother and himself, seemed interesting. “I thought, ‘wow, I have to write about this,’” Peck said during a recent launch event for his book here in Washington.
Peck, an Arlington resident, set out to answer his own questions. Using vacation time from his telecommunications analyst job for research trips—including one enviable one down the Kentucky bourbon trail—he compiled a comprehensive account of drinking culture, the rise and fall of different kinds of alcohol, the plethora of laws we have governing alcohol as a controlled substance and each of these has been shaped by “the noble experiment” and its subsequent repeal.
He learned a lot—and drank a lot—along the way. Six years later, the book is published, he now writes articles on drinks and drinking for various publications, and he has created the “Temperance Tour” throughout downtown D.C. highlighting a number of Prohibition related sites in Washington. Peck sat down again with DCist recently to talk about his adventures researching the book and in experiencing D.C.'s cocktail culture.
What about D.C. drove you to drink—er, write about drinking?
I came to Washington D.C. in 1994. I got out of the Army that year, and I came here for grad school, and have been here planted like a tree—and just love it. It’s a great city. I lived five years in Germany, so I really learned to appreciate good beer, and also good wine. The Germans also have a very good wine culture as well.
And then, my best friend is German and is a beer fanatic. He lives in Boston, which is really a beer city. D.C.? Not so much. We have a big spirits culture and a big wine culture, and we have a couple good places where you can really get good beer, but so many bars up in Boston, they’ve got 20 beers on tap, and it’s $5 for a pint. It’s just remarkable.
Why is D.C. less of a beer city than others, even among those on the East Coast?
I think the cocktail party has always been the key part of the social scene. You go to a party, that’s just the thing. There’s always spirits. Or, you know, cheap chardonnay, and a lot of people are tired of chardonnay, so they drink spirits instead. That’s just part of our culture, specific to D.C. As for wine … you get the fine wines certainly with expense accounts. Maybe not so much with the recession, but generally, if you take a client out, you buy a nice bottle of wine. It goes with the showing.
Beer has always had more of a working class sense to it. And D.C.’s never really been a working class city. Beer has this stigma like it’s for working class males, or sports fanatics. I think that’s one of its hurdles. Also, we don’t have any brewers here. We’re not known for our beer in Washington, D.C. We once had a brewing culture here. Where the Kennedy Center is used to be the Heinrich Brewery, and they sold that to the federal government, which tore down the brewery and put up the Kennedy Center.
Where and what do you like to drink in D.C.?
I find myself going to The Gibson a lot. I’m friends with Derek Brown, and Jon [Harris], the bartender there, is really good at what he does. I really like the Gibson quite a bit. I used to go to PX more often, back when I had a car. I think it’s probably still our best bar in the whole D.C. area, but my car got totaled. I’m really missing PX, because it’s not easy to get to. I also love Wednesday and Thursday nights at the Tabard Inn, when Chantal [Tseng] makes all these great Waldorf Astoria-era classic cocktails.
D.C.’s really got a number of really good craft cocktail bars and to go along with that you have to have, of course, good bartenders. Certainly Derek Brown is one of our best, along with Todd Thrasher at PX. Gina Chersevani is probably one of the best culinary bartenders in the country. She spends so much of her time in the kitchen—she takes her inspiration from what she makes food wise, and tries to make cocktails that match that.
One area that’s interesting: I am gay, and some of the gay bars in the area are really falling behind in some ways. So many of them are volume driven, and less and less do I want to go to those places where you stand in line forever, and then they pull out the rail liquor and the soda gun, and that’ll be $8. Because I certainly drink less—and I don’t drink any more rail. I hit 40, and I’m like, ‘ok, no more rail.’ I’d rather have something that’s actually handmade.
So I find myself going to the nicer places. If I’m going to have one drink, I want something that’s nice, and flavorful, and so I find myself heading more to Bar Pilar, PS7’s. For the gay bars, there’s Halo, which is one of the better ones for cocktails, but for happy hour, they make these Big Gulp-sized martinis and they’re two for one. I have one of those and I’m drunk, so I always give away my second one. I mean, if I drink that second one, call 911. Take me to the hospital, because it’s just too much.
Is the craft cocktails movement here to stay? Is it a fad, or a shift?
It’s hard to say. People are definitely into the craft thing right now. When you go out to some of these bars, you say, ‘wow, what recession?’ People are still going out. Especially in D.C., we’re a little more recession resistant, and people that go to these bars tend to be the middle class, upper middle class people, who are still employed.
At the same time, the recession is changing consumer behavior so much, and people are drinking much more at home. But even at home … I’ve gone to cocktail parties at people’s houses, and they want to make nice cocktails, with good ingredients. So in a lot of ways, the craft thing seems to be fairly recession resistant.
Which D.C. bartender gave you your worst hangover?
I can’t call any particular name—there were many there. It was the Repeal Day Ball, last December 5. They had bartenders from around the country, it was just phenomenal. They all had different stations set up throughout this big ballroom. It was sort of like, wow, I want to try all of these. And I didn’t even come close to finishing all those cocktails, but yeah, the next day, my Facebook status update was “ugh … I can barely get off the couch.” Actually, then I changed it to “Garrett has a prohibition hangover,” to tie in with the title of the book. It was painful. I went through a lot of aspirin.
What was your favorite part of research for the book?
Interviewing Juanita Swedenburg was one of my favorite parts. She died just over two years ago, and she took her inter-state wine shipment case to the Supreme Court. There’s a whole chapter in the book that deals with that called “The Supreme Court Decides.”
What was it about her?
Just meeting this woman, who was in her 80s at this point, and seeing her sense of longevity. She had seen everything, you know? She had served in WWII, and afterwards in the foreign service. She had a really great perspective of the history of Americans and alcohol. And that she had the gumption to take a case all the way to the Supreme Court. And kind of knew it from the beginning. That was one of my favorite parts.
My favorite chapter in the book, and probably the chapter I learned the most from, which surprised me, is the chapter on distilled spirits called "Whiskey and Rye." I knew so little going into it. One of my friends who works for Diageo suggested I do the Kentucky bourbon trail—and it really knocked my socks off. It was completely fascinating, and I discovered how much I really like bourbon. I’ve got a lot of bottles of it at home now. And seeing the Kentucky countryside, which was just stunning. It’s really one of the most beautiful parts of the country. That was probably the biggest revelation for me as I was doing my research. It was something I didn’t know all that much about, because I had always been a wine guy, and then kind of a beer guy. Now I drink all three. Oh, and good gin, too.