By Janiece Meek
Photos by Matt Rose

First, Western North Carolinians had their pick of organic beers, thanks to Pisgah Brewing in Black Mountain. Now, as just about every product on the supermarket shelf goes organic (organic hand sanitizer, anyone?), here’s one to look for on the top shelf at bars: organic liquor. Yes, there are organic spirits, and at least a couple bars in downtown Asheville (plus one in Hendersonville) now consider the offering to be common sense to their mixological attitudes.

Unsurprisingly, Laughing Seed Café in downtown Asheville has been serving an organic vodka, Rain, since its bar opened some four years ago. According to Kristin Welch, the head bartender, it’s a novelty that has sold well. Her latest creation with Rain, produced by the Sazerac Company of New Orleans, is the Sweet Basil Martini (though martini purists would say vodka-based martinis are vodkatinis or kangaroos). She shakes Rain with a generous handful of organic basil and ice, strains it, garnishes it with skewered cherry tomatoes and—voila!—a salad in a glass. In spring and summer, she uses her own homegrown herbs—lemon verbena, Thai basil and the like—to “keep it happening,” she says. 

Rain is also a standard martini ingredient at Limones, a downtown Asheville Mexican/Californian eatery known for mixing drinks with bright-tasting fruit juices. According to Catie Conroy, a Limones bartender who squeezes two to three gallons of fresh lime juice a day on weekends, Rain is right in line with the restaurant’s culinary allegiance to all things fresh and local. (Conroy admits she gets help from an enormous juicing machine.)

At Never Blue, a new restaurant and bar in downtown Hendersonville, owner Jesse Roque says she started eating all organic food during her pregnancy last year, a theme that continued when she and her husband, Edson Roque, and her mother, Pam Cosner, opened Never Blue in February. They sourced the menu with as much organic and locally-grown food as possible, right down to the wine, beer and spirits at the bar. “If people are making organic gin, why not buy it?” Jesse says. “I figured organic gin has got to be better for you than regular gin.” The organic liquors weren’t as high-priced as the trio expected, and they’ve started making a Prickly Bitch martini with organic prickly pear puree and 360, an “eco-friendly” vodka that comes in a bottle made from recycled glass. “The women who come in think it’s hilarious,” says Jesse. “They say—‘You named a drink after me!’”

Turns out there are several health benefits mingling in these organic martinis. First, Rain is distilled from 100% organic white corn at Fizzle Flats Farm, a 1,500-acre farm in Yale, Illinois. During its 20-day distillation process, the vodka undergoes complex treatments, including cold-water-sweet-mash fermentation, seven distinct distillations, a polishing stage with pure limestone water, and filtration through diamond dust and charcoal to remove lingering impurities.

But wait—martinis get even healthier. In a 1999 study in the British Medical Journal entitled “Shaken, not stirred: a bio-analytical study of the antioxidant activities of martinis” (no kidding), scientists found that the antioxidant properties of martinis are enhanced by a shaking action. Gin and vermouth martinis were both shaken and stirred to determine whether 007s the world over might reduce their cataracts and cardiovascular disease by shaking their martinis instead of stirring. (The result: shaken martinis have twice the antioxidants of those stirred.)

Add to that a more recent study, in September 2004, from the University of Texas at Austin, showing that women over 65 who were moderate drinkers (meaning two or fewer drinks a day) had better memories, reported less depression and performed better on everyday tasks than older women who didn’t drink. And that was just regular drinks. Imagine if those 182 elderly Texas ladies in the study had been drinking shaken, organic martinis! Or, in Asheville, organic martinis garnished with macrobiotic basil and a homegrown, hydroponic tomato. Clearly, the organic martini is much more than a salad in a glass. It’s like vitamins in a glass. Cheaper than health insurance and so much more fun. We say, drink up.