I started bartending at a fancy neo-speakeasy in 2008 and, although it was never explicitly stated, there were ingredients that we considered too tacky, too pedestrian, that if I were to bring them to a drink development session, I would have been laughed out of the bar, if not fired. And for good reason. We were part of the vanguard of the cocktail revival and felt it was our solemn duty to bring esoteric ingredients like slivovitz and Old Tom gin to the drinking masses. A few years into my tenure I managed to get a blue curaçao drink on the menu, and it remains there to this day. But there was an entire world of “lowbrow” ingredients that I didn’t let myself appreciate until recently.