One look at the $1,395 slinky chain-mail French lace tops hanging on the racks, another at the skinny ladies perusing them and it was clear why the polenta squares were neglected at a party for designer Jes Wade in Bridgehampton.
The other answer was at the bar, where two attractive men served some unusual cocktails.
“Turmeric is anti-inflammatory,” said Galen Foulois Wednesday night as he poured an orange-hued liquid into a glass and planted an apricot slice on the rim.
Welcome to a Juice Press bar night, one of several in the Hamptons in recent weeks that have laced the company’s nutritious juices with booze.
In a resort area where price isn’t an issue, health is an obsession and being first means everything, it was only a matter of time before a convergence of the bottled cold-press juicing and artisanal cocktail movements.
It’s hard to trace a precise starting point. Earlier this summer a Juice Press regular moved things along when he tapped the store manager of the Southampton branch, Leah Landon, to create cocktails for a party at his home.
Algae Cocktail
Landon paired vodka with Anti Aging (cucumber and e3live, a blue-green algae). Watermelon juice became the base for a margarita with tequila, mint, and agave. Black Label (not the Scotch, but coconut water with dehydrated almonds) blended with rum made for an after-dinner drink.
As to the healthiness of the mixture: “You can’t combine the benefits of juice with alcohol, they’re mutually exclusive,” Landon said during a brief pause from helping customers in the store. “But it’s still the freshest, best product and you’re still going to get some of the vitamins and minerals with it. And it’s the tastiest. We’re not mixing prune juice with vodka.”
And it’s certainly better than mass-market mixers, sodas and bottled juices made with sugar, corn syrup and additives.
In some ways, Juice Press is late to the party: Health- minded products have flooded the alcohol and spirits category, from organic vodka made with quinoa to tea-based mixers to all- natural soda syrups.
Heirloom Tomatoes
Balsam Farms in Amagansett entered the market this year with a Bloody Mary mix made from its heirloom and plum tomatoes ($12 for a 24-ounce jar). The recipe was developed with Michael Rozzi, chef at the 1770 House, to equip customers heading to a brunch or looking for gifts.
The product has been selling so well at the farm’s stand that another batch is planned for September, said Balsam Farms co-founder Ian Calder-Piedmonte. “It’s good for the Hamptons. People are here to have a good time.”
For putting fresh juices into the mix on the East End, some credit to Sabrina Rudin is due. At her wedding in Bridgehampton last summer, guests were offered a kale, cucumber, ginger and organic vodka cocktail. The drink is now headed to the menu at her Spring Café in Aspen, which has been approved for a liquor license. “It was the easy one for the board: Any loud music? No. Any late nights? No. Then go ahead,” Rudin said.
For Juice Press, promoting its stores as bars or its products as mixers doesn’t quite fit the company’s clean-living brand. Chief Executive Officer Marcus Antebi has been sober since he was 15, according to the biography on the Juice Press website.
Catering Package
There are also logistical challenges: The juices are made fresh and have a short, refrigerated shelf life, meaning they would be difficult to sell in liquor stores. All Juice Press products are made at a factory in Long Island City, with overnight drives made to supply the two stores on the East End.
Still, Juice Press has seized an opportunity to increase sales by turning the interest in the product at parties into a hook to develop a catering business.
After the birthday party, Landon created “The Cocktail Party Package” promoted on a flyer in the Southampton store — offering mixers (bottles of Glo, Watermelon, Spicy Citrus and Black Label) and bar snacks (kale chips, raw almonds) at $125 for 8 people. She also designed hangover recovery packs to hand to guests with (booze-less) Juice Press drinks.
No Bartending
Since then, Landon has brought Juice Press to a couple’s annual Hamptons cocktail party, a brunch and a bachelorette party at Gurney’s. She met a bartender at Little Red in Southampton who serves pina coladas made with Juice Press Lait de Coconut ($12.99 for a 17-ounce bottle). And she converted another set of bartenders at the Gansevoort in Manhattan to pour Juice Press cocktails, in anticipation of the opening of a Juice Press store inside the Park Avenue hotel.
The concoctions served at Jes Wade’s party at the pop-up Hamptons Collective took the idea “to a whole new level,” Landon said.
They were created by Foulois, a curly-haired chef who studied at the Natural Gourmet School in New York and said he has no interest in being a bartender. Rather, he’s working on a technology platform for “prescriptive nutrition that takes calorie counting and makes it about food we should be eating. I have no intention of being a bartender.”
Wade chose him, a friend of 15 years, because like her, he has a passion for what he does.
“With my clientele, I have to do something different,” the designer said, who worked for Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren before setting out on her own five years ago, making clothes in her Tribeca atelier. “Meet the chef who developed these cocktails, let him talk to you about the flavors.”
Quinoa Vodka
And that’s how Foulois found himself talking with a fashionable Hamptons set, including Jennifer Padovani of Goldman Sachs and Dawn Zappetti of Citigroup, about Juice Press Liquid Gold. It’s made with juices of orange, turmeric, pineapple, grapefruit, carrot and ginger. He paired it with Fair Vodka, distilled from quinoa.
“It’s almost like a Cosmo, but those are too sweet,” Wade said. “It’s very clean.”
A spicier creation was the First Degree Burn: Farmer’s Gin with a mix of celery, ginger, and lime.
“If I put the spicy in it, I drink it slower,” said Erica Karsch, a client of Wade’s and a Juice Press investor.
The Game On Lemon Lime featured the Juice Press mix with coconut water, coconut nectar and chlorophyll with 123 Tequila, muddled lemon basil and a lime garnish.
“It’s a nice, refreshing fun cocktail for summer,” Lesley Sondey, usually a Campari and grapefruit drinker, said of her Game On.
Salty Rims
The South of the Border cocktail was made with the juice of the same name — a gazpacho-like mix of peeled cucumber, olive oil, orange and yellow bell peppers, avocado, jalapeno peppers, cilantro, apple cider vinegar and garlic — with 123 Tequila. The garnish was black olives and blistered shishito peppers on a toothpick. (Foulois blistered the peppers on his stove himself.)
Foulois rimmed all the cocktail glasses with Farm Candy salts.
“They’re all based on the taste and the therapeutic qualities,” Foulois said. He used organic small-batch spirits. “I’m totally convinced organic provides you with a health benefit and a flavor benefit. You get a better sense of the ingredient that really comes out in each of these spirits.”
As for the health benefits: “If you’re going to drink, this is the way to do it,” he said.
Less Guilt
Camilla Mathlein, an interior architect, said her drink tasted “real. It doesn’t taste sugary or plastic.”
Lynne Sicklick, whose son is helping to open a medical-marijuana dispensary in South Windsor, Connecticut, typically drinks mojitos; on this night, she sipped a Game On. “It’s fruitier. You can tell you’re drinking juice.”
“I would definitely drink this over a mixed drink at a bar,” said Missy Hargraves, who volunteers with Wildlife Rescue and Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons. She said she’s been drinking Juice Press products for a couple of months. “The vodka kicks it up a notch. And knowing there’s Juice Press in it takes the guilt out of it.”
“It’s very vegetable-y,” said Stephanie Unter, who blogs at New York Fashion Hunter, of her concoction. “It’s very good. I’ve never had Juice Press before. I don’t drink gin, I usually drink rose in the summer, but I’m so bored.”
