Art in the Age, the spirits wizard behind Old City’s secret cocktail bar, is back — but it’s complicated.

In April, Philadelphians who had been missing Art in the Age — the hidden cocktail bar in the backroom of an Old City retailer that shuttered suddenly last fall — got some welcome, if cryptic, news. “We’re back and better than ever,” the company announced on its Instagram page. Another post showed it has a new name, Art in the Age Spirits, and another said “bottled in Pennsylvania.” Further details were scant. Commenters applauded, asked questions (”In the same location?”), and speculated (”I hear you will be in my neighborhood”).

“More will be revealed soon!” the company replied.

Those anticipating a cocktail bar or a brand-new distillery tasting room will have to wait. Art in the Age has a new 2,500-square-foot space in Ambler where it will be blending and bottling spirits from its sister company, New Hampshire’s Tamworth Distilling. But for now, the company’s return is limited to the debut of two spirits — Dunce bourbon and Siege of Wolves spiced rum — which aren’t yet on state store shelves but will be available in cocktails at 11 Philly-area bars starting next week.

According to founder and owner Steven Grasse, this is the first step in Art in Age Spirits “taking over the world.” Having recently secured its own Pennsylvania distillery license, Art in the Age can not only bottle — and make — its own spirits and sell them via the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board and direct shipping, but it can also set up five satellite tasting rooms and bottle shops anywhere in the state. Those sites will be able to sell Art in the Age spirits, plus other beer, wine, and liquors made in Pennsylvania.

“It’s going to be on a vastly bigger scale than we did before,” Grasse said. “We have five liquor licenses now and we are very actively looking for partners.”

In the last third of its 14-year run at 116 N. Third St., Art in the Age had transformed itself from a lifestyle boutique to a A-to-Z home bar-supply store with a built-in cocktail bar. It sold nearly everything needed to recreate the inventive cocktails its bartenders served up (new-school martinis, drinks incorporating seasonal produce), from booze to the glassware. Art in the Age 2.0, as Grasse calls it, could look similar, completely different, or both.

“We’re looking for restaurateurs, coffee shops, boutiques,” Grasse said. “We’d like to concept with them on how to either expand what they’re currently doing or bringing our niche cocktails into the mix or coming up with a fresh concept from the start.” He cited URBN’s Terrain Cafe locations or South Street’s boutique retailer/hotel Yowie as examples of businesses he’d love to work with, either bolting on a cocktail bar/bottle shop to their existing operations or creating something new together; he’s especially eager to add food to Art in the Age’s repertoire.

While potential collaborators could take different shapes — ranging from current BYOBs to barber shops — Grasse did specify one requisite quality: “We’re looking for very high-end partners.” Art in the Age Spirits will eventually sell and mix cocktails with top-shelf stuff from Tamworth Distilling, which makes various whiskeys, gins, brandies, pommeaux, vodkas, and cordials. Some of Tamworth’s whiskeys fetch as much as $250 for a 750-milliliter bottle; the bulk of its 60-product lineup sells for $55 and up. Both Tamworth and Art in the Age Spirits are owned by Quaker City Mercantile, Grasse’s Old City-based ad agency/brand management firm, which specializes in developing and reviving booze brands, including Hendrick’s Gin, Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum, Narragansett beer, and Hudson Whiskey.

The spirits making their Pennsylvania debut next week are much more affordable: Dunce is priced at $35 a bottle, while Siege of Wolves goes for $32.

Dunce may be familiar to those who shopped at Art in the Age’s Old City space; it originally premiered there in 2023. The 5-year-old, 80-proof bourbon is one of the few liquids that Art in the Age/Tamworth doesn’t distill in-house. Instead, it’s sourcing the bourbon from Indiana-based distiller Midwest Grain Products, which sells ready-made spirits to dozens of other distilleries, who in turn typically bottle and label it as their own. Grasse is open about this arrangement; the name “Dunce” is poking fun at competitors.

The barrel-aged spiced rum used for the base of Siege of Wolves is also sourced from an outside supplier, but it’s blended with Tamworth’s house-brewed extracts. The flavor profile is meant to invoke one of Art in the Age’s most popular bygone products: Root, the herbal, root beer-flavored liqueur that debuted in 2009. Art in the Age still gets hundreds of requests every year for the return of Root, infused with ingredients like cardamom, birch bark, spearmint, and cloves. This same flavor profile resurfaces in Siege of Wolves, named after an 1830 wolf attack near the site of Grasse’s farm in New Hampshire.

That’s one part of the historical through-line behind Siege of Wolves. “It’s rum with New England spices,” Grasse said. “Typically spiced rums are geared toward Caribbean, warm-weather flavorings, but ... the rum industry in America has a strong history, particularly in New England.”

Previously, Art in the Age was able to bring a limited selection of Tamworth spirits to Pennsylvania through its partnership with Kensington-based New Liberty Distillery, which bottled and sold those products in Pennsylvania. That relationship also enabled Art in the Age — opened in 2009 as a gallery/lifestyle boutique — to add a cocktail bar component in 2017. (The Old City storefront was originally meant to give Quaker City Mercantile hands-on retail experience, so they could use it as an R&D lab/selling point for clients.) The partnership dissolved in September 2023, in an apparent breakup between New Liberty and Quaker City. Grasse declined to elaborate.

As befits an ad man, Grasse is teeming with ideas for Art in the Age’s future. He cites a desire to team up with a “cutting-edge” chef, partnering “designer cocktails” with gourmet food. He imagines a greenhouse-turned-gin palace — a term for ornately decorated gin bars that were popular in Victorian-era London — that sells tea and plants by day and cocktails with Tamworth’s botanical gins by night. To his mind, that’s just one version of Art in the Age 2.0.

“We might have five completely different concepts,” Grasse said. “Nothing is off the table.”

Find Siege of Wolves Spiced Flavored Rum and Dunce Whiskey starting next week at a.bar in Rittenhouse, Bar Hygge in Fairmount, Broken Goblet Brewing in Bensalem, Glory Beer Bar in Old City, Hops/Scotch in Doylestown, Johnny Brenda’s in Fishtown, Prohibition Tap Room in Callowhill, Say No More in Kensington, Tannery Run Brew Works in Ambler, The Keep Easy in Jenkintown, and The Morris in Society Hill.