80 – Thad Vogler: A Short History of Spirits

The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2017

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thad Vogler, creator of San Francisco’s Bar Agricole and Trou Normand, travels the world in search of hand made spirits — rum, scotch, cognac, mescal — and the hidden stories of the people and places behind these spirits. His bar is like library, each bottle rich with story. “Any bottle of rum you take off of the shelf, you have to think about the Caribbean, about the African diaspora, the indigenous culture, the merchant cultures, the colonizing European country, the sugar plantations controlled by the French…”

Thad has just come out with a new book — By the Smoke & the Smell: *My Search for the Rare & Sublime on the Spirits Trail.* It’s a beautiful book —part travelogue, part memoir. We talk with Thad about his life and philosophy, about the impact of prohibition, alcohol as agriculture, tracing ingredients to their source, and the bar as a kitchen.

We also talk to Russell Moore, chef and owner of Camino in Oakland. Russell worked for more than 20 years at Chez Panisse and when he opened Camino he asked Thad Vogler to create a locally sourced, non-GMO bar that reflected his kitchen.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Radio Topia. Welcome to the Kitchen Sisters Presently.
0:04.2	PRX. We're the Kitran Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nicki Silva.
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1:13.2	Thank you very much.
1:14.4	You just smell it.
1:22.4	You can smell olives and green pepper and there are all of these
1:26.7	living vegetal verdant qualities. It just smells like cross-cut sugar cane. It conjures the Caribbean.
1:35.0	Any bottle of rum you take off a shelf, you have to think about the Caribbean,
1:40.0	about the African diaspora, the indigenous culture, the merchant cultures, the colonizing
1:46.7	European country, sugar plantations controlled by the French.
1:52.0	My name is Thad Vogler I own a bar in San Francisco called Bar Agricole
1:56.8	and a second bar in the old Pac Bell building called True Normand.
2:01.2	Thad Vogler is a restaurant tour, a bartender extraordinaire, an historian, and a visionary.
2:09.0	He's traveled the world in search of handmade spirits like Rome, Scotch, Coniac, Mescal, and the hidden stories of the people
	...

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