Paulius Musteikis
Named after the landform, it's the Isthmus cocktail, with Cane & Abe rum and Bos Meadery Pomegranate Pyment.
The cocktail menu at the Brass Ring is in transformation. Bar manager Mark Paschal is bringing his passion for mixology to the endeavor, creating a full craft cocktail program with house originals and drinks featuring local distillers. The results are impressive, and Paschal is having success. “We’ve had 30 or more people in here at a time specifically for the cocktails,” he says. “That didn’t happen before.”
A Ph.D. candidate who always sports a bowtie, Paschal’s approach is friendly and unfussy. It doesn’t hurt that most drinks are under $8, even with high-quality ingredients. A couple of standouts are the City Shrub, which features a house-made peach shrub. The peach comes through the George Dickel whiskey and Carpano Antica vermouth, and there’s a touch of lavender bitters that doesn’t overwhelm. It’s a seasonal, garden-y — Madisonian, even — take on the Manhattan.
Another notable is the Isthmus Cocktail, which uses Old Sugar Distillery’s Cane & Abe rum along with Bos Meadery’s Pomegranate Pyment (wonderful, if you haven’t tried it) with lemon juice and a twist. Pomegranate is the primary ingredient in grenadine, so the mead acts as a recognizable foil for the rum. It’s a clever and tasty mashup of two great local distilleries (both brewed mere blocks away!) in a newly craft-focused bar — signaling that great things are afoot in the Madison cocktail scene.
