Liquid City

It crept into San Francisco last winter as quietly as the fog: a hush-hush new whiskey. A fellow actually named Igor--distributing executive Igor Rodionoff--was bringing it around to the taverns in his car, handing out a couple of bottles at a time as if it were bootleg hooch. He didn’t talk much about the stuff, which he labeled with seamy allure: “Old Potrero Rye.”

It turned out to be delightfully drinkable. “It’s soft and smooth and very flavorful, with a young, fresh finish,” says Ed Moose, who owns Moose’s, a fashionable North Beach watering hole where customers lap up the 124-proof single-malt rye.

Tipplers wondered: What is it? Who makes it? Well, it came from Anchor Brewing Co. on San Francisco’s Potrero Hill, where the legendary, if at times irascible, Fritz Maytag--the father of the craft beer movement--makes Anchor Steam Beer.

Old Potrero is a paean to American pioneers, among whom, it has been said, whiskey-making was regarded as a powerful symbol of liberty. Maytag says his rye is “very close to what George Washington made.”

Maytag mixes up a mash of 100% malted rye that he cooks and distills in the old Scottish method, with the spirits dripped from copper tubes. (By the way, don’t try this at home without a costly federal permit unless you want to risk a hefty fine and jail time.) Then he ages the spirits in charred, custom-made barrels of eastern American oak.

“They drink it over ice, or straight with water back,” says Washington Square Bar & Grill bartender Eric Boardman, who collects $12.50 a shot.

Old Potrero is due to arrive in Southern California this winter.