Field Work: the Gin Mill and Chesapeake Wine Company
I stayed sort of between Baltimore and Washington, DC with some friends while visiting the Library of Congress. On Friday, when I had completed all my Xeroxing and could endure no longer the pains of papercuts or the pure abject ugliness of the Performing Arts Reading Room, my friend Jen took me to see the American Museum of Visionary Arts and then for drinks. All I will say about the AMVA is that it’s amazing. Now, on to the bars.
We stopped first at the Chesapeake Wine Company, which, delightfully, is a combination wine and beer and delicious things shop and bar and restaurant type place. You get to sit in a cute table surrounded by the shelves of lovely bottles. They serve old fashioned drinks, including, as pictured, actual old fashioneds and champagne cocktails. I’d never had a champagne cocktail made by someone else, and I was not in the least disappointed. The atmosphere is perfect — somehow both completely casual and totally elegant.
After, we wandered to the Gin Mill which boasted an equally impressive listing of old cocktails, including Pisco Sours and Gin Fizzes and similar. The atmosphere at the Gin Mill is more in the vein of a rather nice bar in a more conventional vein.
I’ve enjoyed traveling, but I’m glad to be back in my own life with my own bar. It’s easy to get out of the habit of making things. I will be co-hosting a birthday party this Friday, though, which should kick me right back into gear.
