19 Dec The Most Important Day For Bartenders: Repeal Day

December 5th may not mean anything special to most people. But this day between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a day that should mean something to anyone who enjoys a glass of wine or a cocktail. After all, December 5, 1933 is the day that Prohibition was ended by the signing of the 21st Amendment to the Constitution and when beer trucks rolled into Washington DC and President Franklin D. Roosevelt poured himself a Plymouth gin martini. This year, December 5, 2013 marked the 80th anniversary of the end of Prohibition, otherwise known as Repeal Day, and the D.C. Craft Bartenders Guild organized their annual Repeal Day Ball to celebrate the occasion on Dec. 7. Some of D.C.’s top bartenders, including Todd Thrasher (PX/Bar TNT), Chantal Tseng (Mockingbird Hill), Jamie McBain and Duane Sylvestre (Bourbon Steak), Adam Bernbach (2 Birds 1 Stone) and Frank Jones (The Gibson), as well as some special guests – Dale DeGroff (The Museum of the American Cocktail), Sean Kenyon (Williams and Graham, Denver), Ed Hamilton (Ministry of Rum) and Kate Gerwin (Bar Magic, Las Vegas) – spent the evening mixing up cocktails in the many rooms of the former Old Navy Hospital. Guests, many dressed in 1920s attire, paid $100 to attend, with a portion going to the nonprofit Museum of the American Cocktail.