Toasting 20: Reflecting on Two Decades of Imbibe
After 20 years of covering bartenders and baristas, sommeliers and brewers, coffee roasters and spirits distillers, tea growers and winemakers, drinks historians and flavor developers, and the people making and serving sodas, milkshakes, kombucha, yogurt drinks, and various and sundry beverages all across the liquid spectrum, we at Imbibe are now in the awkward position of writing about ourselves.
That’s what happens when you successfully make it through two decades of defying the odds. Even when Imbibe first debuted in May 2006, the writing was seemingly on the wall for print publications. While smartphones and tablets weren’t yet in circulation, readers were shifting their allegiances from hard copies to websites and other digital formats, putting newsstands on the endangered list along with everything they sold. Launching an ink-and-paper magazine at the time—especially one devoted to topics like craft cocktails, which weren’t even a full-fledged thing at that point—suggested recklessness or maybe just excessive familiarity with the subject matter.
Imbibe’s inaugural issue took readers to Oaxaca at a time when single-village mezcals were just starting to trickle into bars across the country.
The timing, though, turned out to be perfect. Imbibe’s inaugural issue took readers to Oaxaca at a time when single-village mezcals were just starting to trickle into bars across the country. We looked at a growing trend in cafés now widely recognized as coffee’s third wave, which revitalized the category and made pour-over drinkers of us all. Our initial Elements section covered cocktail bitters, of which there were maybe three or four styles at the time. And we profiled cocktail historian Ted Haigh, “Dr. Cocktail,” whose explorations of vintage recipes helped put the creative wheels in motion for what was about to become a global tsunami of cocktails that has yet to recede.
A couple of months after that first issue came out, I attended my first Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans. The event at that time was much smaller in scale than the massive convention it has become, but the crowd was filled with the dedicated and the passionate in those nascent days of the cocktail renaissance. Imbibe was not yet required reading—our second issue was still fresh from the printer—but the magazine had clearly captured the attention of the assembled bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts, and they were waiting to see where we would go.
That early indication that Imbibe was catching on with both the professional side of the beverage industry as well as with ardent home enthusiasts proved consequential. Over the years, we’ve regularly encountered readers who are industry insiders, whether their job is shaking cocktails, pouring beer or wine, or pulling espressos. They’ll share tips or insights they’ve discovered in our pages, talk about recipes they’ve introduced to their guests, or mention people they first met in Imbibe who’ve gone on to become friends or coworkers.
Being embraced as a reliable resource by beverage professionals is among our proudest accomplishments at Imbibe.
Being embraced as a reliable resource by beverage professionals is among our proudest accomplishments at Imbibe. But with every issue, and every story idea spun out during an editorial meeting, we’re also always thinking of the readers joining along at home. Imbibe is valued by the trade, but we’re also available on the shelves at grocery stores and bookstores, and we take that home-enthusiast relationship to heart. Can a cocktail recipe realistically be made by a home bartender using ingredients they can readily find or may already have on hand? Is a coffee article or a wine story at risk of becoming opaque with technical jargon, and can we translate that into normal-people-ese?
Since that first issue, “Liquid Culture” has been Imbibe’s tagline. For the first 10 years, we focused much of our attention on the “liquid” aspect. Our features and departments focused largely on introducing readers to some of the many drinks that were increasingly populating our bibulous world at the time. Rye whiskey was emerging from history and recapturing its role in cocktails; absinthe was becoming legally available again for the first time in almost a century; seemingly every brewer in the country was embracing the India pale ale; and coffee drinkers were increasingly curious as to whether their bag of beans hailed from Rwanda, El Salvador, or Sumatra.
By the time we reached our second decade, much of this advance education work had been done. So in the past 10 years, we’ve leaned a bit more on that “culture” side of the equation. We took readers along on explorations of Boston breweries and Buenos Aires cocktail bars, celebrated events like Negroni Week and Speed Rack that resonated with bartenders worldwide, and shared the voices of historians, activists, and educators working to shape today’s culture.
… [Our] independence and our small size may ultimately work in our favor, helping us remain nimble and adaptable …
And through it all, we’ve remained independent. In some ways it might be easier if Imbibe had a major corporate owner, with deep pockets we could draw from when a beautiful-but-expensive idea circulates at an editorial meeting. But our independence and our small size may ultimately work in our favor, helping us remain nimble and adaptable as headwinds ranging from economic tumult to a global pandemic have regularly thrown challenges our way.
It surprises people sometimes when I share that Imbibe’s central team could all be seated comfortably at two four-tops pushed together in a restaurant. At our core, we’re eight people—our immensely talented and patient art director Molly Henty, our keep-the-wheels-on production and circulation manager Sarah Thornton, our globe-trotting events and partnerships director Olga Semoukhina, our drink-anything and write-anything editorial team of Penelope Bass, Caroline Pardilla, Emily Saladino, and myself, and Imbibe’s founder and publisher Karen Foley, without whom none of this would have ever happened, and who ultimately keeps us rolling from issue to issue.
We’re immensely fortunate to work with a wide and far-reaching group of talented writers, photographers, illustrators, and other creative professionals who help us make Imbibe what it’s been for 20 years. And we’re similarly privileged to have earned a loyal base of readers, subscribers, and advertisers over the years who’ve kept us going with their support, and for helping us beat the odds as an ink-and-paper magazine in the 21st century. Thanks to everyone for believing in us for so long, and cheers to 20 years.
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