// EDITOR ’ S NOTE

When I walked upstairs at The Dead Rabbit , and saw the third-floor spread of hors d ’ oeuvres and full Glencairns for our Laws Whiskey tasting , something felt right .

The scene took me back to 2019 . Before Covid-19 , I would attend NYC trade functions like this once or twice a week . Riding the train in from Connecticut , I would continue by subway and foot all over the city for events . As back then , meeting me at The Dead Rabbit — a worldclass bar near Wall Street — was my usual Manhattan + 1 , Matty A . That ’ s his college nickname , a broey title from back at UConn , which I alone still call him these days .

In the years leading up to Covid , Matty A and I must have attended 100 events . He ’ s director of technology at a fashion company headquartered in midtown . In suit and tie we visited bars and restaurants across the city , sipping the latest releases from the industry . We sampled The Balvenie 25 on a penthouse rooftop deck overlooking Times Square . We drank Mount Gay 1703 on a private craft off Liberty Island in the Hudson . We discovered that The Macallan had hidden a bottle of Rare Cask in the coat check , and cracked the code to get unlimited pours .

And then we didn ’ t see each other for three years . He was promoted several times , and I had a child . Manhattan was slower in recovery than other cities , owing to the catastrophic nature of the pandemic there . At first , trade events came back in a trickle . Tightly organized , with short invite lists . Exhausted from a restless newborn , I mostly stayed home .

My daughter has since learned how to sleep , and New York has learned how to move on from Covid . Before The Dead Rabbit , I had attended other NYC trade events in 2022-23 . But that Laws Whiskey tasting was the first time that an event felt free from the pandemic hangover . Everybody was there , all the top spirits writers in greater Manhattan . I chided Robin Robinson , famously of the opinion that whiskey terroir is scientifically impossible , when the topic inevitably came up .

It was an amazing atmosphere , absent any Covid stress . Matty A and I had dressed up . We drank wonderful four-grain whiskeys from Colorado , and ate The Dead Rabbit ’ s delicious appetizers , as though nothing unusual had ever happened .

Beverage Group Vice President Jeremy Nedelka Tel : 763-383-4413 email : jnedelka @ epgacceleration . com

Editor , Off-Premise Kyle Swartz Tel : 763-383-4447 email : kswartz @ epgacceleration . com

Editor , On-Premise Melissa Dowling Tel : 763-383-4442 email : mdowling @ epgacceleration . com

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4 Beverage Wholesaler • Summer 2023