This story is part of a partnership between “City Lights” / WABE” and Rough Draft Atlanta called “The Beverage Beat with Beth McKibben.” As a “City Lights” contributor, McKibben joins the program monthly to highlight her most recent Rough Draft story on Atlanta’s cocktail, wine, coffee, and nonalcoholic beverage scene.
Did you know that in 1970, more than 30 states included laws prohibiting women from bartending?
Michigan, for example, prohibited women from being licensed bartenders in cities with 50,000 or more residents unless the businesses were owned by their fathers or husbands.
Bartender Valentine Goesaert challenged the Michigan law in 1948, stating that it violated her rights under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. While the case (Goesaert versus Cleary) landed in front of the Supreme Court, it was ultimately upheld.
The decision was finally overturned in 1976.
Up until the mid-1970s, everything from wildly outdated social constructs like the chivalric codes of the Middle Ages, puritanical viewpoints on gender roles, and indecency laws were cited as reasons to keep women from bartending or even entering taverns, saloons, and other morally compromising establishments unless accompanied by a man.
At the turn of the 20th century, women in Atlanta could be prosecuted for drinking in bars unchaperoned and were often surveilled by the police.
Bars that did allow women to enter without a man featured ladies’ entrances leading to a back room away from the main bar. Ladies’ entrances existed at bars across America well into the 1970s.
More “progressive” bars of the day included snugs or tight corner spaces with a tiny table and a couple of chairs walled off on three sides to keep imbibing women safe from prying eyes.
For nearly 100 years, women weren’t permitted to drink at the famous Sazerac Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans – accompanied or not – except on Mardi Gras. That changed on September 26, 1949, when a group of local women pushed into the men-only hotel bar demanding equal treatment and to be served drinks.
The hotel eventually caved to their demands, and the event became known as the “storming of the Sazerac.” It’s celebrated annually at the Sazerac Bar as a victory and a milestone toward women’s social equality.
Barmaid versus Bartender
The term “bartender” was almost exclusively reserved for men. Instead, women in the same role were referred to as “barmaids,” considered a suitable title for women in a profession that many people felt walked a murky line between morality and making an honest living.
Ada Coleman, the most famous female bartender of all time – and the inventor of the classic cocktail, the Hanky Panky – stood out amongst her male colleagues for more than just her gender. Coleman was the head bartender of the famed American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London from 1903 to 1925, leading a team of men and one other woman bartender: Ruth Burgess.
Breaking with tradition, which saw women bartenders often working behind the scenes at the service bar, Coleman and Burgess mixed their cocktails standing front and center at the main bar within full view of hotel guests.
Despite her high-ranking position at the American Bar, however, Coleman couldn’t always escape being called a barmaid. And while she likely invented other drinks beyond the Hanky Panky, it’s the only cocktail fellow American Bar bartender Harry Craddock credits to Coleman in his “The Savoy Cocktail Book,” published in 1930.
Craddock took over as head bartender at the American Bar when Coleman left. Today, the Hanky Panky is as famous as the American Bar itself, and is recognized by the International Bartenders Association as one of the most requested cocktails of all time.
A take on a sweet martini, the Hanky Panky calls for:
• 1 1/2 oz London dry gin
• 1 1/2 oz sweet vermouth
• 1/4 oz Fernet-Branca
Stir all the ingredients with ice until chilled, pour into a chilled coupe glass, and garnish with an orange twist.
From the Stone Age to the 20th Century
Boundary breakers like Coleman and Burgess and the women of the Sazerac Bar were hardly the first of their kind.
Stone tablets dating to 4,000 BC depict women making beer in Mesopotamia. Similar archeological evidence suggests women living in ancient Egypt were doing the same.
During the Middle Ages in the Netherlands, most of society believed women were superior brewers to men. In the mid-15th century, women made up 30 percent of the brewers in London.
Martha Washington was famous for making cordials at Mount Vernon, like Cherry Bounce, a brandy-based drink made from fresh tart cherries popular in the 18th century.
As a hostess in Richmond, Virginia, Mary Randolph published “The Virginia Housewife” in 1824, a manual covering everything from curing meats and baking cakes to making currant wine and brewing spruce beer.
Mary Virginia Terhune is credited with being the first woman to write a cocktail book, published in 1904. It included instructions for mixing spirits, along with primers on wine and toasting at parties.
For centuries, women have been tavern owners, brewers, and distillers, making beer, cider, wine, and spirits to drink for pleasure and as medicinal remedies. Women were also moonshiners and bootleggers and instrumental in the repeal of the 18th Amendment and Prohibition.
Witch! Witch! She’s a Witch!
Yet the perceived fragility of women’s bodies and minds and the belief that they were easily corrupted by temptation persisted well into the late 20th century.
No matter how much success they achieved or the boundaries they broke to prove themselves, women couldn’t escape thousands of years of deeply rooted societal misogyny. Just as women have always been involved in the alcohol trade, they were also as maligned for producing and serving it over the centuries.
In Fred Minnick’s book, “Whiskey Women”, he notes in the very first chapter that the Greeks fervently disapproved of women drinking wine. The Romans punished women severely for drinking or simply being near wine, a horrific offense on the same level as committing adultery, punishable by death.
Women brewers called “brewsters” found themselves at the center of witch hunts throughout the Middle Ages in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Minnick mentions that one woman brewer living in 14th-century West Yorkshire was branded an “ale witch” because she bypassed a law requiring ale to be tasted before selling.
Atlanta’s boundary breakers
Today, women like Atlanta bartender Kysha Cyrus continue breaking down long-held gender stereotypes when it comes to women working in the bar and alcohol industries. Cyrus is a 20-plus-year veteran of the Atlanta bar scene and partner in cocktail bar Mambo Zombi above Georgia Beer Garden on Edgewood Avenue.
She’s worked with some of the city’s most notable bartenders, including Greg Best and Regan Smith of Ticonderoga Club. She first met Smith when they worked together at Chef Emeril Lagasse’s now-defunct Atlanta restaurant.
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“Regan was the only other woman there, so when I came in, she was like ‘yes’! But there weren’t a lot of other female bartenders out there [when I started],” Cyrus said. “I applied to certain bars, and there were only guys there or older gentlemen. So if you were a younger woman and a young Black girl, they definitely thought I didn’t know anything.”
Cyrus explained that most of the female employees at the bars she worked at were servers or relegated to the service bar. Those experiences early in her bartending career pushed Cyrus to learn more about her craft and not be underestimated.
Cyrus would go on to work for Holeman & Finch alum Andy Minchow at Ration & Dram (now known as Dead End Drinks). Later, she landed at Joystick Gamebar on Edgewood Avenue, where she met her future Mambo Zombi business partners Johnny Martinez and Brandon Ley.
“You had to really prove yourself [as a woman bartender], so I think that’s why I kept learning. It gave me the push,” Cyrus said. “I just kept reading and tasting and talking to the right people, and luckily I met the right people. [As a woman], you have to show people that you’re interested or nobody’s going to take you seriously.”
By this point in her career, and after watching some men with less experience rise to near-celebrity status as “startenders,” Cyrus admitted she had become too comfortable with playing a supporting role behind the bar. When Martinez and Ley offered her the opportunity to partner in Mambo Zombi, she didn’t hesitate.
At Mambo Zombi, Cyrus leans into her love for maximalist and Day of the Dead decor and her Jamaican and Caribbean heritages.
One of her most popular cocktails at Mambo Zombi is the Monkey Screwed made with spiced banana-infused Bounty rum, New Grove rum, coconut milk, and banana syrup with a fresh lime wedge set on fire.
Cyrus believes Atlanta has one of the most progressive cocktail, beer, and wine scenes, evidenced by the many women and LGBTQ+ people found at every level in the industry here.
So, who are the women, trans women, and nonbinary people breaking boundaries on Atlanta’s drinks scene today?
Cyrus and Smith, along with the incomparable Tiffanie Barriere, made names for themselves in the early days of Atlanta’s craft cocktail movement, a time, nearly 15 years ago, when men dominated the spotlight behind the bar. There were others, too, including Keyatta Mincey Parker, Toki Sears, and Kellie Thorn, to name a few.
Then there are sommeliers like Sarah Pierre, the owner of 3 Parks Wine Shop, and cicerones Jen Blair, Jen Price, and LaTreace Harris.
All of these women helped lay the foundation for a new generation emerging on Atlanta’s drinks scene.
This year, Kursten Berry of Twisted Soul Cookhouse and Pours was one of 20 bartenders recognized by the James Beard Foundation as a semifinalist for its Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service award.
Related stories:
• Pastry chef Claudia Martinez opening dessert and cocktail bar
• Wine bar Madeira Park opens in Poncey-Highland
Mayim Williams, formerly of El Malo and Kimball House, will lead the bar program at award-winning pastry chef Claudia Martinez’s new dessert and cocktail spot Bar Ana.
Jett Kolarik will run the wine program at the upcoming Side Saddle Wine Saloon, which will center women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ wine and spirits producers on the menu.
There are three female-led cocktail pop-ups in Atlanta right now with Girl Bar, Kiddo’s No. 6, and Spirited Sistas, run by bartenders Melanie Evans and Kia Palmer.
And keep your eye on sommelier Jade Palmer, the general manager of Madeira Park, a new wine bar owned by Steven Satterfield and Neal McCarthy of Miller Union and Dive Wine founder Tim Willard.