Four Women to Watch
Behind the Bar and in the Boardroom, These Ladies are the Industry's Extraordinary

In an industry that was once dominated by men, women are shaking up a great deal more than cracked ice and cranberry juice these days. From mixology to marketing, bartending to big business, the industry owes a debt of gratitude to female fortitude. Nightclub & Bar salutes four of America’s most successful women in the industry –– Julie Reiner, Lucy Brennan, Bridget Albert and Ann Rogers. 

Julie Reiner, Mixologist,
Owner of Flatiron Lounge and Pegu Club, New York City
    From her early days in Hawaii to her current location behind the bar menu and the business at New York City’s Flatiron Lounge and Pegu Club –– Owner and Mixologist Julie Reiner’s road to success has been paved with liquid intent.
    Her earliest jobs included stints at AsiaSF and The Red Room in San Francisco, where Reiner learned the basics but also began experimenting.
    “I moved to New York and started managing a lounge in the West Village,” she says. “At the time, it was called C3, and I started putting out seasonal cocktail menus. I was kind of just entertaining myself. At the time, I didn’t even realize that people like Dale DeGroff existed. I never realized I was doing something that a lot of other people weren’t doing. The next thing I knew, I was on the front page of the New York Times Dining section.”
    The drink in discussion was Reiner’s Metropolis, a house-infused Apple Martini, which she was making the hard way, because she says she “hadn’t even tasted the Pucker Martinis that people were doing. I was cutting up Granny Smith apples and letting them seep in the vodka for about three weeks,” Reiner says.
    From the press over her infusions, Dale DeGroff took an avid interest in Reiner’s talents, as did noted mixologist Audrey Saunders.
    “I realized from being at C3 that people wanted high-quality cocktails, and there was nobody delivering that in New York,” Reiner says. “Most of the cocktails were Rose’s Lime juice and cranberry juice off the gun.”
    In 2003, Reiner and five partners opened Flatiron Lounge, one of New York’s first venues bringing culinary to the cocktail.
    Flatiron –– a space whose ancestral patronage included members of the Rat Pack –– combines a 1920s ambiance and Reiner’s seasonally inspired goodness in a glass.
    “I think the most rewarding moment of my career was the day that Flatiron opened,” she says. “I had been running around like a mad woman with Susan Fedroff and Michelle Connolly (managing partners). The lights went down and the music went on, and we looked at each other and were like, ‘Oh my God. We did this.’”
In 2005, Reiner struck gold again, this time in business with Audrey Saunders and the infamous Pegu Club. But patrons are still likely to find her behind the bar at Flatiron.
    “I am back there on Thursday nights, at least once a week,” Reiner says. “I am comfortable behind the bar, so I tend to end up back there a lot.”

Lucy Brennan, Mixologist
Owner of Mint and 820, Portland, Ore.
    Before she was behind the bar at her attached Portland, Ore., venues Mint restaurant and 820 Lounge, you might have met West Coast bar maven Lucy Brennan at the Park Hyatt in San Francisco –– managing the room service staff. She then moved on to Oregon’s Saucebox restaurant around 1994. Twelve years later, Brennan’s mixology has prompted a book deal, bartending classes taught in two locations in Portland and a spot for her on Playboy.com’s latest “A-list: America’s Top Bartenders.” Why? Who else puts beets and avocados in cocktails and makes them seem as inherent as the vodka?
    In the spring of 2001, Brennan opened her restaurant Mint, named after the Greek symbol of hospitality, and began a venture of alchemy behind a pile of West Coast, fresh produce.
    “I think it is definitely a different style of cocktail making,” she says. “The West Coast is a little more liberal, and the East Coast is definitely more traditional. At the same time, I do believe, if you are going to come up with an avocado daiquiri, you have to know your classic cocktails. You can’t just jump in at the deep end.”
    Brennan’s journey to becoming a big fish in the pond has been littered with editorial accolades, including recognition in both Bon Appétit and Food & Wine, and along the way in 2003, she opened Mint’s sister space, 820 Lounge. Eventually, her new bar added a tad too much notoriety.
    “I wasn’t actually able to do the bartending anymore,” Brennan says. “It wasn’t like I couldn’t do it, it was that people wanted to talk to me and ask me questions about drinks –– which is lovely –– but I couldn’t actually do my job.”
The solution came in the form of classes. Brennan currently teaches in two locations in Portland –– behind the bar of 820 and at In Good Taste across town.
    “My demographic is the people that are not in the industry,” she says. “I love it when I am at my local store, and an older lady, who has just taken my class, comes up to me and says, ‘Lucy, I made some drinks. They were great.’”
    On top of her busy life running two venues, teaching and occasionally consulting, Brennan’s first book, “Hip Sips,” recently was published by Chronicle Books of San Francisco. Inside the slick covers are recipes for the classics, Brennan’s own concoctions featuring everything from fig puree to rhubarb syrup and a few Mocktails, for those who want a virgin sip.

Bridget Albert, Mixologist
Director of the Academy of Spirits and Fine Service of Illinois, Chicago, Ill.
    Bridget Albert has bartending in her bloodlines on the female side all the way back to her great great grandmother and her great great aunt. Generations later, Albert is making her family and the industry proud as a competitive mixologist and an instructor for Southern Wine & Spirits.
    “I started out in a bar pretty far south of Chicago as a cocktail waitress,” Albert says. “I wasn’t very good at it. One day the bartender got sick, and I looked at him and asked, ‘Does this mean I get to put tennis shoes on and give it a try?’ He said ‘sure,’ and, honestly, I never left.”
    Eventually, Albert moved to Las Vegas to work and study under renowned “Modern Mixologist” Tony Abou-Ganim in his academy at The Bellagio. It was there that Albert acquired formal training on the characteristics of the world’s premium and super-premium spirits, the history of classic cocktails and the finesse involved in drink preparation.
    “Tony offered a course much like I offer now,” Albert says. I really credit him with all of my knowledge.”
    About a year and a half ago, she returned to Illinois and took her current job with Southern Wine & Spirits as a mixologist and director of the Academy of Spirits & Fine Service. Her 12-week course is modeled after the one that Mixologist Francesco Lafranconi developed in Nevada, with an emphasis on understanding the classics and honing the skills necessary to compete, and competition is Albert’s forte.
In 2005, she placed second in the world in the Bacardi Martini Grand Prix and was the first woman ever to place in the United States. Most recently, she competed alongside Chef Robert Gatsby against Abou-Ganim and Chef Mario Batali on the hit show “Iron Chef of America.”
    “I really found my niche, and I am lucky,” she says. “There is a lot happening behind the bar that maybe wasn’t an issue 10 years ago … molecular mixology, deconstructed cocktails. Right now, I think we are reaching out as far as we can to create some new classics. We will see what works and what doesn’t in the next 10 years. That’s how we grow.”

Ann Rogers
Founder of Tales of the Cocktail, New Orleans, La.
    New Orleans –– the birthplace of the cocktail was also the birthplace of industry up-and-comer Ann Rogers. From her work in marketing for some of the city’s large bar and restaurant accounts to establishing her event company, Sponsor One, to inspiring and maintaining the city’s New Orleans Cocktail Tour, Rogers is easily one of the Crescent City’s busiest business women. Her most noted work in this industry has blossomed in the last five years, however, in the form of an anniversary festival called Tales of the Cocktail.
    “I have always been interested in marketing and promotions,” says Rogers. “Even when I was a kid, I used to cut out ads from magazines and save them.”
    In 2002, Rogers began a major event attraction for her hometown to preserve the rich history of New Orleans’ food and beverage industy. The Southern Comfort Cocktail Tour leaves from the Gray Line Lighthouse seven days a week and offers visitors a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the city that invented the cocktail and cultivated a great percentage of America’s culinary brilliance. On the first anniversary of her cocktail tour, Rogers decided to throw a little festival she designated Tales of the Cocktail.
    “That first year, we had two events –– the cocktail hour and the spirited dinner,” she says. “We had 11 mixologists and cocktail book authors, and originally the idea was just for that anniversary. But after the first year, everybody wanted to make it an annual event. Now my vision for it is huge. I would like to see it be the next Aspen Food & Wine Classic.”
    Scheduled for July 18–22, 2007, Tales of the Cocktail is in its fifth year, and Rogers is gearing up to educate and entertain more than 10,000 people with 75 events and the country’s finest in food and beverage.
Food & Wine magazine has actually been a sponsor for the last three years, and this     July, the events are riddled with industry celebs, such as the three ladies mentioned in this article, Ted Allen, Dale DeGroff, and Kevin Brauch of Fine Living’s “The Thirsty Traveler.”
    “We are the perfect backdrop for an event like this,” Rogers says of New Orleans. “It is the birthplace of the cocktail. So we are constantly going back to that bloodline with celebrations of drinks like the Sazerac. This event is unique because nothing else in the country really talks about our cocktail history in this way, all year long.”
Rogers recently established The New Orleans Culinary and Cultural Preservation Society, a 501(c)3 charity, that now produces Tales of the Cocktail.
    “Tales of the Cocktail is what I really love doing,” Rogers says. “I always say it is going to be my gift to the city when I am gone.”                                                                       NCB