What makes a cocktail craveable? Philly pro Jennifer Sabatino talks the evolution of local spirits scene.

It is easy to find a good cocktail in the Philadelphia area these days. You’ll find them in bars throughout the city, suburbs, and well beyond, often made with Pennsylvania booze.

We didn’t always have it this good. Philly’s spirits renaissance took off in the late aughts, fueled by makers like Philadelphia Distilling and bars like Franklin Mortgage. It was at full steam by 2012, marked by the openings of enduring institutions like Hop Sing Laundromat, Lloyd, and Stateside.

The latter location is where Philly craft-cocktail veteran Jennifer Sabatino first made a name for herself by building out an ambitious bar program that took its cues from the local, seasonal food menu. At Stateside, clover clubs were shaken up with house-made grenadine; house-infused amaros were stirred into negronis and martinezes. It made East Passyunk Avenue a cocktail destination, something Sabatino still takes pride in.

That experience, as well as her time running local spirits-focused Aldine in Rittenhouse, primed her for her current job as director of bar operations for Manatawny Still Works. The Pottstown-based distillery approached her in 2018 to run their then-new tasting room on East Passyunk. She went on to open Manatawny bottle shops in Reading Terminal and Suburban Station (since shuttered by the pandemic), and is now overseeing two new projects for the distillery: an Ardmore tasting room that opened in October, and a forthcoming Fishtown location on North Lee Street, near Pizzeria Beddia.

The Inquirer met with Sabatino at Manatawny’s new Lancaster Avenue location and chatted about the distillery’s growth, the evolution of local booze, and why Pennsylvania (if you can believe it) is a great place to open a distillery.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

One of our partners lives out here, so he’s been pushing to get a spot open out here. We looked at a couple other spaces, and none of them were the right fit or the right feel. And we walked into this space and were all like, “It’s going to need work, but...” It was a RE/MAX office, but it was a nice, big, open space, which is what we wanted.

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I think we bring something new here, because it’s not a restaurant. It’s a bar to come before dinner, after dinner, have a drink. So far the neighborhood has been awesome when they walk in are like, wow, this is fantastic. You can get the full seasonal cocktail menu, classic cocktails. We’re not doing food yet — I want to get the lay of the land first — but it will probably be cheese and charcuterie and tinned fish like at East Passyunk.

Manatawny’s getting bigger. I think the partners have done really well with the business plan of slow growing. We’ve been able to grow the company with the demand we’ve had. We haven’t tried to push anything. We still only really distribute within Pennsylvania. The tasting rooms are really more brand awareness than anything else. It’s about teaching people who we are, what we do, where you can buy us, how you make the drinks that we make taste just as good at your house. We just happen to have great cocktails and play fun music and present like an atmosphere that’s welcoming. My goal has always been to be a place that doesn’t seem intimidating. If you read my menu, you recognize all of the ingredients for the most part. You have an idea of what your drink is going to taste like, and you’re pleasantly surprised that it’s deliciously better than what you thought it would be.

With Manatawny, we’re only allowed to use our spirits and spirits made in Pennsylvania. So we have to get really creative. There’s been a couple of companies making really good stuff, like Dumpster Juice’s vermouth and Boardroom Spirits’ herbal liqueur. You have to look for them, but they’re out there.

For as crazy as Pennsylvania liquor laws seem to be, for distilleries, they’re insanely liberal. I spoke at the American Craft Spirits Association’s annual conference this year, and I attended one of the meetings on state laws and learned Pennsylvania is looked at as the example of what people want in their states. Our distilleries can have several satellite bars, we can sell direct to consumer, and we can ship within Pennsylvania. That’s not the case in a lot of states. My friend in Seattle owns a vermouth bar and her cocktail sales can only account for 30% of her revenue or else they’re fined. There are some states where you can only sell only so many bottles to a single customer per year, and you have to keep records of that. It’s wild. So I came back and I was like, “Yeah, Pennsylvania.” It’s a good idea to be a distillery here.

We do what we call R&D days. Anybody on staff is invited to come and contribute to the cocktails on the menu that’s up and coming. Everybody brings all of these ideas, staying in the vein of what our cocktail program is — easy and approachable. I typically will pull out a bunch of books and pull up my farm lists and see what produce is coming. I rely a lot on all the fall cocktail menus I’ve done in the past, but I also rely on my staff to bring forward new ideas. Then, when we’re trying and tasting, we’re constantly asking, “OK, this is really good. How do we make this better?” You look at it in the way that chefs look at food. What does this cocktail need to make it craveable? That’s where my head is always at: What do people drink that they don’t have to think too hard about, but they love it and they’re thinking about it later.