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Bitter and better
Wormwood Distillery opens tasting room in Industry City
In the pour house: Standard Wormwood Distillery co-owner Sasha Selimotic mixes a Manhattan, made with the distillery’s own vermouth and rye whiskey. Photo by Caroline Ourso
By Bill Roundy They’re setting the standard!
A distillery and tasting room
now open in Industry City produces
spirits made with an exotic, once-forbidden
bitter plant. Standard Wormwood Distillery
creates whiskey, gin, and other kinds of
booze out of wormwood, a key ingredient
in absinthe that was banned in the early
20th century because of suspicions that
it could cause hallucinations — concerns
that were concocted by a rival beverage,
said one distiller.
“It was a hit job from the wine
industry,” said Taras Hrabowsky, who
founded Standard Wormwood with Sasha
Selimotic.
Restrictions on the herb were lifted
in 2007, and the pair, then roommates
in Bushwick, began experimenting with
it. Now they use the plant to distill a
rye whiskey, a gin, an amaro, an apertif,
and a semi-sweet vermouth, along with
an agave spirit (which legally cannot be
called mezcal since it was not produced in
Mexico, but tastes much the same).
The addition of wormwood gives each
spirit a unique character, said Hrabowsky
— one that is distinct from absinthe.
“It gives the spirits a long finish,” he
said. “It’s a way to add complexity. People
assume it’s going to be licorice-y, but we
say right on the bottle that there is no anise
or licorice flavor in here.”
In fact, Standard Wormwood does not
make absinthe, because its founders are
focused on making something new, said
Selimotic.
“We do love absinthe,” he said.
“For us though, it’s about exploring the
possibilities of what wormwood and bitters
in spirits can bring.”
The pair previously worked in a
cramped spot in Bedford-Stuyvesant,
but the Industry City location gives them
plenty of space to experiment. The back
room features a mad scientist-like shelf
of bottles, each containing the essence
of a different herb or fruit, along with a
still and other equipment. In the front is a
45-seat bar, where people can sample the
results of those flavor trials.
“Experimenting is what this is all
about,” said Hrabowsky. “We can do little
things that are one-offs, things that we
only do here — it gives you a reason to
come back.”
The bar has a cocktail menu filled with
classic drinks, including the Manhattan, the
Sazerac, and the Margarita, each made with
A little jarring: The distillers at Standard Wormwood experiment with many different flavors while
working on their next spirits. Photo by Caroline Ourso
liquor produced on site — and if you like
what you taste, you can buy a bottle to go!
The distillers plan to produce two more
kinds of vermouth and another apertif in
the near future, which will let them add a
Martini and a few other drinks to the menu.
Standard Wormwood Distillery Tasting
Room 68 34th St. between Second and
Third avenues in Sunset Park, enter from
Industry City Courtyard 5/6, (718) 635–4368,
standardwormwood.com. Open Thu–Fri,
5–9 pm; Sat, noon–10 pm, Sun, noon–8 pm.
Your entertainment
guide Page 53
Police Blotter ..........................8
Letters ....................................34
Health ..................................... 37
Love in Brooklyn ................. 47
HOW TO REACH US
COURIER L 4 IFE, FEBRUARY 7-13, 2020
BY ROSE ADAMS
A decades-long scheme to
shore up the southern Brooklyn
coast has resulted in a
massive wall of sand that’s
built up along the tip of the Coney
Island peninsula — causing
property damage, health
problems, drainage issues,
and eye sores, according to locals.
“It’s like Lawrence of Arabia
out there,” said Anthony Ceretti,
whose mother-in-law has
lived for decades in Sea Gate, a
gated community on the western
tip of the peninsula. “We
get hundreds of pounds of sand
on our deck each year.”
The fi rst major fortifi cation
project came in the mid-1900s
when the US Army Corps of Engineers
extended a rock-based
substance called a terminal
groin and added 35,000 cubic
yards of sand to the ocean side
of the peninsula in an effort to
prevent future erosion.
Over time, however, tidal
patterns shifted much of the
sand to the side of the peninsula
opposite the boardwalk —
which led to the creation of a
beach surrounding the northern
shore of Coney Island and
Sea Gate, according to one longtime
civic leader.
“There was never a beach on
the bayside of the peninsula,”
said environmentalist Ida
Sanoff, who formerly lived in
Sea Gate by Gravesend Bay. “At
low tide, we used to get maybe
six feet of wet sand.”
Locals eventually adapted
to the new reality, enjoying
their man-made beach — even
if it caused the occasional drain
backup and sand accumulation.
But the dunes started to
grow as the US Army Corps
and the Parks Department continued
to dump thousands of
pounds of sand onto the beach’s
southern shore — which would
migrate up to Gravesend Bay.
The Corps and the Parks Department
have conducted several
sand removal projects on
the northern shore and constructed
new terminal groins
in 2016 to help prevent the
buildup, but residents say that
conditions only worsened —
and have reached a breaking
point.
“This year is the worst year
I’ve seen,” said Ceretti.
These days, the sand dune
is fortifi ed above the walls that
surround Sea Gate, often spilling
over the fences and covering
residents’ yards like snow.
Homeowners who live in the
dozen-or-so houses along Ocean
View Avenue complain that the
giant dune blocks their view
of Gravesend Bay and causes a
plethora of consequences.
“It takes over our backyard
and causes all kinds of damage,”
said Patrick Fioriglio, who
lives on the maritime roadway
next to the bay. “There’s health
problems. There’s breathing
problems.”
Sea Gate residents can navigate
a number of bureaucratic
hurdles each year to obtain a
permit and hire a bulldozer
to plow the sand back into the
ocean — but even then, their relief
is only temporary.
“Every year we have to push
(Top) Anthony Ceretti points to the nearly 20-foot sand dune behind his
mother-in-law’s Sea Gate house. (Bottom) The sand builds up around
homes along the coast, routinely spilling sand into rear yards.
Photos by Derrick Watterson
back the sand, it blows back,
we push back the sand, it blows
back,” said Fioriglio.
Ceretti added that residents
fork over around $15,000 every
year for the unsustainable plow
job.
Much of the blame lies at the
feet of the Parks Department,
according to locals, who accuse
the city’s greenspace gurus of
failing to do their part to clear
the sand from the public side of
the fence that borders the private
Sea Gate community —
which allowed the wall to build
up in the fi rst place.
“If the city kept their side of
the fence clear, Sea Gate would
have a much smaller issue to
contend with,” said Ceretti.
A representative from the
US Army Corps of Engineers
did not say whether the additional
sand on the southern
shore may have caused the gigantic
sand dune to grow, but
claimed that the t-groins have
prevented conditions from
worsening.
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‘LIKE LAWRENCE OF ARABIA’
Massive sand wall threatens homes along Coney shoreline
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