Spirit & Bower bartender Christopher Gandsy makes decisions about his personal style and cocktails in a similar fashion.
“My normal day-to-day, if I’m not in uniform, is typically jeans on jeans, that Canadian tuxedo,” he says. “I enjoy muted colors with basics, basic items that you can pair accessories with. And I think basic goes a long way because you can do pins, brooches, hats, which can change the feel of it.”
A Columbia native who spent 18 years in Brooklyn, New York, before landing in Greenville in 2022, Gandsy is also known to also incorporate handkerchiefs into his ensemble, often folded lengthwise and knotted around his neck, giving a pop of color from under his signature denim collar.
“If I’m working behind a bar, it gets hot, it’s sweaty,” he says. “You don’t want to have sweat running down, so it’s functional as well as stylish.”
Spirit & Bower Cocktails
It’s that form-meets-function mindset that informs the choices he makes when crafting cocktails at the cozy basement bar of the Grand Bohemian Lodge. Case in point, he’ll choose a coupe glass with its slender stem for cocktails that are booze-forward and stirred. “You can’t warm the glass as quickly with the stem,” Gandsy says.
One particular showstopper served up with simple garnishes is Spirit & Bower’s In the Clouds, a riff on an Aviation that Gandsy says doesn’t need much to command attention. Similarly to an Aviation, Hendrick’s gin, crème de violette, and lemon provide the bulk of the build, but in place of the traditional maraschino liqueur, maple provides the sweetness and a shaken egg white rises to the top, blanketing the pale-blue drink in a white cloud-like layer. Orange bitters are dropped in, and Gandsy pulls a toothpick through the droplets to create a chain of hearts.
“If it’s done right, that’s the aesthetic,” he says, pointing to the contrast of the blue against the fluffy egg white.
For a cocktail in a rocks glass that’s meant to be swirled between sips, Gandsy offers Caribbean Heritage, a rum-based build with Bacardi 8-year, Cointreau, honey, lemon, orange, yuzu and a Jamaican sorrel float. Hibiscus is another name for the traditional deep-magenta sorrel drink, and as the cocktail is poured over ice, the colors begin to separate into an ombre effect, progressing from dark at the base to light at the top. A simple orange twist, which is expressed over top of the cocktail before it’s finished, rests atop the ice for a subtle whiff of citrus on the nose.
The colors of the cocktail ingredients and the way they’re prepared and executed provide the desired look for the drink without any need for flashy or over-the-top garnishes.
“The work goes in before, just like my style,” Gandsy says.
Spirit & Bower, 44 E. Camperdown Way, Greenville, spiritbower.com
