Beyond Custom Cocktails, Bars and Restaurants Turn to Proprietary Liquor

It started with the Penicillin, the drink New York barman Sam Ross dreamed up at the fabled, dearly departed Lower East Side speakeasy Milk & Honey back in 2005. The Scotch-ginger-lemon-honey concoction, a vital part of the modern-classic cocktail canon that is riffed at bars around the world, is one of Mikey McFerran’s favorite tipples. McFerran, and his partner Mark Gibson, co-owner of New York hangouts the Penrose, the Wren, the Bonnie, Sweet Afton, Wilfie & Nell, and Bua, opened whiskey-centric The Spaniard last year in the West Village, and fittingly he added—with Ross’s blessing—the famed Penicillin to the menu. “Sam’s original version used Compass Box whisky, so we stuck to that when we launched. It's one of the best-selling cocktails at the Spaniard, so we've now become Compass Box's best-selling account on the Eastern seaboard,” McFerran explained. “When Compass Box approached us about collaborating on a whisky together, we knew that they were among th