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Winter in the Med

Charleston, SC’s Bar 167 opened in August with a glowing Italian Agate bar and high standards to meet.

Winter in the Med

Charleston, SC’s Bar 167 opened in August with a glowing Italian Agate bar and high standards to meet.

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he hugely popular 167 Raw (downstairs) and 167 Sushi have been lauded local favorites since College of Charleston grad Jesse Sandole opened the former nearly a decade ago, serving up cocktails and an elegant but unpretentious menu on which Truffled Diver Sea Scallops sit next to Crispy Oysters. While the new venue’s kitchen is equally compelling, the Mediterranean-inspired space shines as a stage for the bar’s brilliant libations.

Here, Juliana Fisher, who helped to create the cocktail menu, brings sunshine to the fall/winter season. Not all secrets were divulged and some of the ingredients are obscure, but if you take inspiration and create your own variations, you should have a wonderful holiday season. Better yet, visit Bar 167 and leave the mixing to the experts. Tell Nick we said hi.

Yellow Gin & Tonic (Above)

Bar 167 offers both “Yellow” and “Red” G&Ts. While the fruit-ish latter is lovely, we like the Yellow, which brings earth notes but maintains refreshment. Bar 167 uses a tonic made in-house from 12 or so ingredients, including pink peppercorn and turmeric, and so you’ll never get it exactly like theirs. But we were inspired to combine various spices (roughly a ½ tsp each of turmeric and ginger) in a shaker and strain, and the results were good. The point here is to get beyond clear—and then don’t spill it on your white sofa.

  • 1 ½ oz Gin
  • ½ oz Lemon juice
  • 1 ½ oz House-made Yellow Tonic


Shake all, fill your glass of choice with pebble ice, strain, add soda, garnish with crushed dried jasmine and enjoy.

167 Negroni

Johnny Cash has Walk the Line, Mötley Crüe has The Dirt, and the Negroni has Looking for Negroni. And if they’ve made a biopic about you, you’re some kind of success or disaster. This century-old Italian cocktail is the former, of course, changed up here via gin steeped in Shiraz grapes for a cinema-worthy classic.

  • 1 oz Bloody Shiraz Gin
  • 3/4 oz Primitivo Quiles Vermouth Rojo
  • 1 oz Campari Orange Peel


Add the spirits to an ice-filled mixing glass and stir until chilled, then strain into a rocks glass over a large ice cube. Garnish with the orange peel and bere alla salute di qualcuno.

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Fire in the Garden

This luxuriously floral and festive drink is at once refreshing and warming thanks to the chile-infused vodka and the Firewater Bitters, made from habanero and other ingredients (relatively easy to find). It also employs Ms Better’s Bitters Miraculous Foamer, which replaces egg whites, adding froth without coloring flavor (or requiring the deft touch often demanded by fizzes).

  • 1 ½ oz St. George Green Chile Vodka
  • 1 oz Lemon juice
  • ½ oz Rose/Hibiscus syrup
  • ¼ oz Simple Syrup
  • 2 dashes Firewater Bitters
  • 1 dropper Miraculous Foamer Dried rose petals


First dry shake the ingredients, then shake again over ice, strain into a coupe glass and garnish with dried rose petals.

Jungle Cat

Thank you to whomever stopped by Mexico en route to Polynesia as tequila and tiki sail well together. Bar 167’s cat sits high on the genre’s totem, balancing tequila and sweet pineapple with lime/clove/nutmeg/cinnamon/cardamom and more from the Velvet Falernum and Campari. A slight lift from the ginger and it’s bon voyage to the jungle.

  • 1 ½ oz Tequila
  • 1 oz Pineapple juice
  • 3/4 oz Campari
  • ½ oz Ginger
  • ½ oz Lime juice
  • ¼ oz Velvet Falernum
  • 2 dashes Bittermans Elemakule


Add all ingredients to a shaker. Shake hard and strain into a Collins glass, garnish with two pineapple fronds and a luxardo cherry.

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Fulton St. Rickey

From the start the Rickey was a sugar-averse highball, instead relying on a balance of spirit (originally bourbon, now more typically gin), soda water and lime for success. Bar 167 likes a traditional gin for this, which Juliana points out could be called a sugarless gin mojito. We’re considering it for an easy holiday livener, perhaps with a red-and-white straw…

  • 1 ½ oz Gin
  • ½ oz Fino Sherry
  • 3/4 oz Fresh-Squeezed Lime Juice
  • ½ oz Simple Syrup
  • ¼ oz Ginger Club soda / Mint / Cucumber


To a shaker, add cut cucumber, a pinch of mint leaves and everything else—exceptthe soda. Shake hard then pour it all into a Collins glass, top with soda and ice, garnish with a mint sprig and a cucumber spear, and be refreshed.

Aegean

This aptly named jewel brings the wood/pine note of Mastiha (a liqueur derived from the Greek mastic evergreen) to the molasses/sugarcane of Mexican rum. The RumHaven and Coconut Water Syrup sweeten the edge, and the whole thing shimmers with the orange-bittersweet Blue Curaçao. In the hand this cocktail calls dreams of island getaways to mind; in quantity it might call them to reality if one browses airline tickets while drinking. We say go with the flow, and parakaló.

  • 1 oz Uruapan Charanda Blanco
  • ½ oz RumHaven
  • ½ oz Skinos Mastiha
  • ¼ oz Blue Curaçao
  • ½ oz Coconut Water Syrup
  • 3/4 oz Lemon juice


Shake all ingredients and strain into a rocks glass over a single large ice cube, then add a little soda water and spritz with absinthe. Garnish the glass with toasted coconut and sail away.

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