Takes a Village to raise a glass

Now let us toast Village Whiskey, a wall of hard stuff, shaded rich amber and rosy copper, rising behind the bar, more bourbons here (54 and counting), and rye, Canadian, Irish and Scotch than you'll likely find - well, maybe you can find a few more at Bourbon, the bar (now two bars), in D.C., but that pretty much covers it.

Liquor reps gasp at the sight. Some of this stuff was thought extinct, or at least in hiding, as skittish about appearing in public as a wild turkey in hunting season.

Serious drinkers go weak in the knees. They say they'll pass. Then you see them with a toot of Tuthilltown Manhattan Rye, Pappy Van Winkle 23 Yr., or The Macallan (12 Yr., Cask Strength, 18 Yr., or 1841 Replica, priced from $11 to $28! a one-ounce shot).

Village Whiskey - lazy ceiling fans, hanging acorn lights, octagonal floor tile - is at the corner of 20th and Sansom, a click off the center of Center City. It is the latest, and most Norte-Americanized space of hot Latino hand Jose Garces, Iron Chef star. It is appended, in fact, to Tinto, Garces' dark, Basque-themed wine bar, with which it shares a subterranean (bicultural) kitchen.

We shall visit the food menu momentarily, and one crosses one's fingers that another rarity - the elegant, mildly creamy and briny Cape May salt oyster - will keep its place on it.

But first, a word on the silly-tini fad that by the mid-'90s coursed throgh Old City, then bled into Manayunk, threatening to redefine the drinking life of this old city as surely as German lagers did - but in a stouter way - more than a century ago.

In Victorian barrooms, ceilings of pressed tin, and in corner tappies, shots and beers never left. But good bourbon disappeared, as did rye, and the muscle memory, in more refined digs, required to mix honest and old-school cocktails of the grown-up persuasion.

At the Continental, the yuppified diner at Second and Market, you could get yourself a best-selling Astronaut martini (Tang, yes, the space program's powdered orange drink, and peach vodka). But try to get a decent Manhattan or Old Fashioned or, heaven forfend, a proper Negroni! ("Negroni? Isn't that gin and . . . ?" Well, yes, it's gin and Campari, sweet vermouth, and twist of orange.)

"Retro" was just another word for Tony Bennett on the sound system. If it hadn't been for the barkeeps at Southwark and a few other keepers of the flame, the art of the cocktail might have died in the city.