Karla Green is the creative director of Louisville’s Watch Hill Proper, one of the largest whiskey bars in the United States. There are more than 1,700 American whiskeys on the menu, so I wouldn’t recommend trying to order a white wine spritzer or a gin and tonic. There’s a whiskey, or a whiskey cocktail, for everyone and food and cocktail menus there rotate seasonally. We recently caught up with Green to understand how she develops these continually rotating cocktail menus.
Maggie Kimberl (MK): How does designing a cocktail menu for a whiskey bar differ from designing a cocktail menu for a general bar?
The difference with Watch Hill is just the magnitude of offerings that we have. Only being American whiskey, since that is our primary focus, we don’t celebrate other spirits in that way… I learn quite a bit from using American whiskey as the canvas. I think it’s intriguing for guests to come in knowing that while their fall-back might be a vodka or gin-based cocktail, there is something that they can enjoy there with similar flavor profiles that might open them up to whiskey.
