White Cap, the Outer Sunset and the ideal martini

Over the course of the last several months, I’ve come to meet and know many of those I like to refer to affectionately as “cocktail nerds.”

These are the beverage directors, bar managers and owners who pour themselves into creating the drinks we consume, the ones who lovingly ferment strange ingredients to make new flavor profiles, who smoke wood chips in glass beakers, who painstakingly take weeks, or even months, to design their menus.

I’ve thought there’s no way someone could top Julio Bermejo, the beverage director at Tommy’s who, after I said I thought I had what I needed after an hour of talking about margaritas, told me we weren’t done yet. Then he proceeded to offer me some eight more tequilas to better understand their terroir.

Or Josh Harris, the owner of Trick Dog , whos