Spice: The Fennel Frontier

I attended Tad Carducci’s Manhattan Cocktail Classic lecture called “Spice: The Fennel Frontier”(held at Astor Center Wines) immediately after spending the afternoon at the Veggie Pride Parade. I had to transition from hearing people dressed as carrots and pea pods talk about horrendous factory farming to learning about the confluence of herbs and cocktails. It was a relief to intellectualize about ingesting sans bringing animal abuse into the discussion. Cocktails, unlike many of the things we eat, involves only sugar and spice and everything nice.

“Spice: The Fennel Frontier” enabled me to boldly go into a type of lecture room where I had never gone before. All attendees had their own sinks; a fully equipped kitchen was located at the front of the room. I realized that attending a lecture about drinking constitutes college student heaven.

Carducci discussed the following cocktails: Negroni, Little Market, The Sully, Sea Monkey, and Masalarinha. The listeners were served all of these drinks. If I had imbibed them at one sitting I would have fallen under my sink—or turned into a carrot or a pea pod or something. Even a small sip of each drink caused me to become a little tipsy. All was going well with my decision to limit myself to licking the spices off the glass rims—until I hit the hot red pepper.

This informative and engaging lecture taught me these new facts: mints pervade everything, all cinnamon comes from Sri Lanka, Coca Cola is made from spices, and slaves in ancient Egypt used spices to cool their bodies.

Who knew?

I enjoyed this event—and learned a lot too.

Cheers!
– Marleen

Photos via Kara Newman, wine and spirits writer.
For her take on the Spice seminar and other MCC event, visit here!