Escape from Douchebaggery, Part 26: Las Vegas Distillery

Ah, whiskey.

When beer just isn't strong enough to do the trick, I like to drink a nice glass of whiskey on the rocks. And then another. And then a few more.

While there are a few good breweries in Las Vegas, there were no distilleries in Nevada (well, legal ones, at least). Until now.

Charming raconteur George Racz  is the mastermind behind the newly opened Las Vegas Distillery, which was founded just two years ago to  become the state's first legal liquor distillery. Open to the public, George is happy to offer tours of his facilities and teach people about the process of crafting his delicious concoctions. He'll also tell you his completely fascinating life story, as the charismatic liquor craftsman is quickly becoming a local hero.


At this point, he can't legally pour drinks on his premises. But soon enough, his tasting room should be open for business. (I'm hoping against hope it's up and running by the time I visit Sin City next, but that might be wishful thinking.)

While you can't drink at the distillery, his bottles are available in a bunch of local stores. The self taught distiller has taught himself super-well. I haven't gotten to sample all of his offerings yet, but George's Devil's Darling Seven Grain Whiskey from his "Whiskeysmith Collection" is excellent straight or on the rocks, and his Shorty Harris Corn Bourbon is terrific too (while many Southerners claim the only real Bourbon comes from Kentucky, they'll just have to get over it because George's riff is incredible).

Their most unique concoction is their one of a kind series of "Rumskeys," which are exactly as their name implies... a series of Rum and Whiskey blends double distilled from fermented molasses/rum base and whiskey mash/ whiskey base. The distillery offers a few styles of their the mad scientist's concoction, including barell aged Baby and a White, which was awarded a Gold Medal at this year's San Francisco World Spirits Competition. It sounds crazy, but the Frankenstein creation is actually super drinkable (and capable of getting you TOTALLY MESSED UP if you're not careful).

George also makes a few different Vodkas. I'm sure they're all just as good as everything else he crafts, but I don't really drink Vodka all that often because I'm not a 19 year old college girl.

The Distillery is also working on a Big Barrell aged Whiskey series and aged Rumskeys in Bourbon, Rye, and Single Malt varieties that won't be available until 2014, but leave my mouth watering in anticipation. I'm sure they will all kick serious kinds of ass.

While you can't sample the wares on the premises, it's still worth a visit to The Las Vegas Distillery to see how George Racz and his merry band of liquor craftspeople make their magic. And then immediately find a store that sells his product for a night of locally sourced partying.

Escape From Douchery, Part 5: Red Square

I promised that I'd eventually get around to recommending cool places on The Strip where the air isn't thick with the smell of Axe Body Spray, but thus far I've focused mainly on Downtown Vegas in my inconsistently ongoing escape from douchery series. And while Downtown is going through something of a hipster renaissance these days, when I started an entire blog about how much I love Vegas in the face of snobbish scenesters who think the town is strictly for the same dumb people who make Fast and the Furious movies into hits (okay, I kinda love the Fast and the Furious movies as well), I knew I'd have to eventually deal with the fact that The Strip is Vegas and Vegas is The Strip. To avoid writing about anything on Las Vegas Blvd. would be a mistake born of a fear that the legions of my loyal readers would judge me and I'd immediately lose credibility if I admitted to liking something too lame and corporate in the middle of a street that stands as a metaphor for the runaway capitalistic excess that defines American culture.

But the truth is I do love The Las Vegas Strip. It's huge and flashy and stupid, but sometimes huge and flashy and stupid can be fun, especially if you put down your Noam Chomsky book and just let yourself flow along with the tao of dumb. And even if you want to intellectualize it, I think there is something interesting and deeply metaphorical about the massive fake empires of fakery built along The Strip that says something about America and our culture and values, for better or worse.

No place I can think of embodies that stupidity and excess more boldly and ironically than Red Square at Mandalay Bay. With a massive, headless Lenin statue greeting you at the entrance and kitschy commie propaganda posters lining the walls, this Russian themed vodka bar, lounge and restaurant in the middle of a city that completely symbolizes the runaway excess of capitalist values is a place with its tongue planted firmly in its cheek, a watering hole where irony runs so deep that even the most indie-credible hipsters in Brooklyn and Austin can only bow their heads in awe and respect.

Sure, it glibly flips complicated recent history into a jokey bar theme in a way that may potentially infuriate crusty old KGB loyalists, but the extreme commitment to the theme is what makes Red Square so much fun. You could write a college thesis paper about post-modern culture and the devaluation of historical symbology and the metaphorical irony of a communist Russian themed bar on The Las Vegas Strip, but then you'd just be another grad school jerk who should be writing their thesis on something more important anyway.

Red Square is as well themed as a Disneyland ride, except the theme is an anti-capitalist society in which free thinking was discouraged and you'd never have the freedom to indulge in the kind of excessive reveling that takes place in the bar, which is what makes Red Square simply awesome. Plus, the bar features a great selection of vodkas, all chilled to perfection. So take off your thinking Ushankas and just enjoy the extreme irony of enjoying a drink in a Las Vegas bar decorated with hammer and sickle flags and communist propaganda.