The Olde Mouldy

07/04/2024

Hi all, long time.
I’m (Nate) working on a thing (it’s not a bar), but this isn’t about that.

This is about my old boss Joe. Joe’s got cancer.

The first time I walked into Federal Wines I was 21 and looked 15. A family was telling Joe about their matriarch who emigrated from Scotland’s Orkney Isles. He grabbed an open bottle of Orkney’s own Highland Park and poured them each a glass then cocked his head over at little Nate who was loitering in the back of the store and called, “hey! you drinkin’?” It meant so much to that family, after hearing stories of this remote Scottish archipelago all their lives, to experience such a tangible connection.

It was that generosity with whisky, to almost everyone who walked in the door, that led Whisky Advocate to name Federal Wines one of the best whisky bars in Boston, to the utter bewilderment of all who stumbled into our dusty liquor store after reading the magazine.

Shortly after that Highland Park I quit my job as a stock boy at a sh*tty clothing store and started working at Federal as a delivery boy. Joe is not a man with an overabundance of formal education and so undertook my apprenticeship with a sense of duty, with rigor, and exuberant drunkenness. Joe is also not a man of means but he’d managed to stash a number of legendary bottles over his tenure at Federal. Without hesitation he set about opening them in order to expose me to these historic pillars of whiskydom — and also because they were really fu***ng good.

It was that pedagogy that the Olde Mouldy sought to carry forth: popping the corks of spectacular bottles, sparing no whisky for its rarity or value, in the name of education and exuberant drunkenness. The bar even survived long enough to bring Ardbeg’s excellent 21-year-old from 2016 back onto the menu in 2021 with yet another stashed away for 2026.

Joe is family to me, and I’m grateful that I was able to be there with him before the surgery to remove his larynx so he could have a loved one holding his hand right up until it was time to be wheeled off to anesthesia. I’ve been in that position with my own brain surgery, and recovery was long and hard, even with ample support from family and friends. Joe doesn’t have the privilege of such a robust support network but Joe has us — Please tip him if you can.

xoxo
Nate (and Tania)

Joe Howell's moment of fame came in the Holdovers movie, when as the liqu… Len Rothenberg needs your support for Help Joe Howell Fight Another Killer - Cancer

09/11/2021

Thank you to everyone who came to our magical booze closet this summer — y'all really surprised us by packing the room every night we were open.

Stay tuned for special events in December and January, covid willing. But get off FB* and onto our email list** or watch oldemouldy.com for updates.

Please note: We've disabled messenger not because we don't want to talk to you but because we prefer good, old-fashioned email.***

08/05/2021

UPDATE: Well, that was fast. Six seats left for solo sippers: W 8/11, Su 8/22., W 8/25, Su 8/29, W 9/1 or Su 9/5.

Everyone else, two possibilities ...

WAITLIST: Email drink at oldemouldy.com with the size/size range of your party. Most of our cancellations have been day-of, so we will likely contact folks on short notice, via email.

6pm option: On days we are open, we can sometimes open early for a seating. Email drink at oldemouldy.com with requests. (Days open can be viewed on the reservation calendar on a computer or desktop mode on your phone's browser — they're black on the calendar and closed days are light gray).

We will try to prioritize regulars/folks who haven't been able to get in in 2021, if we get inundated.

Folks, thank you for filling our bar up with your lovely faces. It's been busy! But if you haven't booked yet, a heads-up: We have 10 days of service left, which would 240 seats available, but y'all have been booking 'em all up, and there are only 29 seats left. So, some help for those of you who might still want to come in.

Party of 5 or 6 or wanting to not hang with strangers? is your day.

Party of 4? We've got one slot .

Party of 3? See above.

Party of 2? Add W 8/18 &

Flying solo? Add

to the options above.

You can book those seats at oldemouldy.com (if the ones listed above aren't available when you go to the site, yes, that means someone else already snagged them).

06/24/2021

Good news everyone, we’re reopening!

tl;dr: Our reservation books are open on oldemouldy.com. Pick a date and time and either book the number of seats you require, or, if you’re not comfortable sharing the bar with strangers, find a slot with all six seats available and book them all so you’ll have the place to yourself. If we have another reservation coming in after you, we may regretfully have to place an hourlong limit on your stay.

The longer version:

On March 15, 2020 shortly after finishing our bar renovations, debuting a bigger menu and unpacking all our new glassware, we made the decision to close for two weeks. Dear reader, it has been a long two weeks. But now, 67 weeks later, we’re pleased to announce that given the encouragingly low covid case numbers being posted in Cambridge and Somerville recently (notwithstanding a recent wastewater analysis in our neighborhood of Cambridge, *gulp*), as well as the fact that both Tania and Nate are fully vaccinated, we’re finally feeling comfortable welcoming you back into our stuffy, sweltering closet. [Wait for applause.] For two months.

This autumn, I (Nate) will be matriculating in a distance learning diploma program studying brewing and distilling, and Tania and I have decided, at least for the first semester, to discontinue the Olde Mouldy so I can focus on my coursework. Because despite it’s diminutive size, this bar is much too much for only one person to manage. We hope this won’t be the end of our strange and precious little project, but if you cannot stand the idea of missing what may be your last chance to drink at the Olde Mouldy, then we’ll see you soon.

Here’s the plan: We’ll be open by reservation only, generally for hourlong time-limited seatings on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with a few exceptions (we won’t enumerate them — just have a look at our reservation calendar and pick whatever works). Not accepting walk-ins is going to be really inconvenient for some of you, and we apologize for that. If you tend to make relatively snap decisions about whether to swing by for a nightcap, our system closes off bookings four hours before the time of reservation, so if you’re hoping to make a 10pm day-of booking, you’ll need to make it before 6pm. If you can’t make your schedule work with our normal hours, please send us an email at [email protected] and we’ll see what we can do to accommodate.

If you’re comfortable drinking in an unventilated closet with strangers, please book the number of seats you require. If you are comfortable drinking in an unventilated closet, but not with strangers, only your pod (not the Invasion of the Body Snatchers kind), then please identify a reservation that still has all six seats available and book all six of them regardless of your party size, and you may have the bar to yourselves (but please give us a heads-up of your actual party size so we can be best prepared for your arrival). If you are vaccinated but unsure about drinking in an unventilated closet, we get it. If you’re unvaccinated, then our bar is a goddamn death trap.

Our first day of service will be Wednesday, June 30. Our 6th anniversary, which we haven’t spared a single moment to think about, will be Sunday, August 22, and our last day of service before our indefinite closure will be Sunday, September 5. Actually, if you’re not comfortable drinking with strangers, please don’t book on those days, as there may be quite a number of people who want to celebrate those occasions with us.
We’re opening a bunch of new bottles, because, well, whenever we ran out of whisky at home we would pilfer open bottles from the bar. So expect a bunch of exciting stuff, especially peated stuff because Tania drank literally every bottle we had open. We can’t wait to see you all again!

xoxo,
Tania and Nate

03/31/2020

Because Tania and I have both been sick at various points in the last few weeks, we’ve gone on one zero-contact grocery run but otherwise have neither gone out for- nor ordered delivery of -- any sort of supplies. But since we still don’t know what we had, nor will we be tested any time soon, we broke down and ordered snacks. In the interest of the health of people working for FedEx, the USPS, etc., we limited ourselves to two orders, and in enough quantity to last us... a while. They arrived yesterday. How is one supposed to answer the question: What is the right amount of snacks? It sure seems like a trick question. We did our best.

03/30/2020

Tania wanted to make shepherds pie with lentils as the base, which is wise, because shepherds pie is a delicious, potato-topped protein slurry that exists to convey its rich, savory gravy, and lentils are well suited such an endeavor. Maybe with some mushrooms. And beer. Something dark, but not one of them sweet pastry stouts; something roasty like a porter. And nothing fits the bill quite like Hill Farmstead’s Everett -- it has this unique soy sauce umami note that is surely there by design, for balance, and created via autolysis during... listen it doesn’t matter, the point is that it’s got this savory note that makes it great to cook with.

But while Tania was dreaming of lentils, I was thinking about how, probably a decade ago, I heard about a beer dinner that involved sabayon made with a Belgian quad. I’ve thought about sabayon a few times a year ever since but never found the right moment. A gloomy, rainy day under quarantine after we’d recently bought five dozen eggs finally felt right.

Usually sabayon is made with a sweet wine like Sauternes or marsala (in the case of the Italian version, zabaglione). But since we were opening an Everett anyway, I figured go with the idea that inspired me to make the dish (drink?) in the first place. So after reserving a half-cup for cooking the lentils and a couple glasses to enjoy while we worked, I whisked a good glug with some sugar and egg yolks over a double-boiler until it thickened enough to hold its shape a bit. Aren’t these cups cute?

Tune in next time, when we try the chilled version and I do something with all of these egg whites.

03/28/2020

I (Nate) have moved onto Ryan Chetiyawardana’s second book, which is loosely themed around dinner parties. This both means that he (Ryan) forgives himself for rather more involved preparations, but also that many of the drinks are scaled up for bulk service, which I like. Yesterday was so lovely out that we prepared a round of his frosé margarita. Because we’re sheltering-in-place and why the hell not?

03/26/2020

Taking a walk has a sense of surreality to it. Everything is in stasis, bewildering, distant and yet inescapably present. Do I have a job? Does it matter? Do we need an “economy”? Do we need laws? If I wander through my neighborhood with a cocktail in hand will anyone give a f**k?
The answer was no. So here I am wincing at the frigid drops of rain that cut our stroll a little short yesterday evening. We were going to sit in a park, but brrr, so we turned around at this really big tree.
Xoxo.

03/25/2020

I think it was after hearing an interview with Billy Sunday’s Stephanie Andrews that I took an interest in their vintage-rabarbaro Old Fashioned. However I came to it, after finding a recipe online in Chicago Magazine, I made my first one a couple of months ago. They make it the old school way, muddling sugar with water, but replace the typical dash of ango with a splash of Zucca (I used fizzy water to help dissolve the sugar.) The resulting drink, with its extra dilution and gentle fizz from the seltzer, its fruit and depth from the rabarbero, reminded me of the old “fruit salad” Old Fashioneds you would get a decade ago if you ordered one anywhere other than Drink or Deep Ellum. These days, the only place you’ll consistently find that style is Wisconsin, where they proudly hew close to tradition, albeit a tradition that insists upon a base of brandy rather than whiskey... At least, that’s what I’ve read, do I look like I’ve ever been to Wisconsin?
Well since I happened to have both 1960s Zucca Rabarbaro and a fairly lean and innocuous ‘60s Cognac at home, I got out my muddler last night and went to work. The result was delightful, nostalgic, and nailed my platonic image of a Wisconsin Old Fashioned (whether or not it bore any resemblance to the real thing.) It’s depicted here without the recommended orange twist, because we haven’t left the house in more than a week and we finished our kumquats days ago.

03/24/2020

Isolation Log, Day, uhhhh ... at least 9? It's getting hard to remember what day of the week it even is.

We wanted to share a drink with people other than ourselves — at the very safe distance afforded by video chat, of course. So Nate whipped up an Americano for me and simplified a Jungle Bird into a Daisy for himself, and finished them just in time for our friends to hop online (who were coincidentally also enjoying Campari in the form of Boulevardiers). But we were so excited to be interacting with other humans (particularly ones we love) that we forgot to photograph our drinks entirely.

03/21/2020

Isolation Log Day 6: Where does time go? Yesterday I made the decision to pick up a new book, one that felt like candy -- no nutritional value, just simple pleasure. That’s different for each of us of course, but for me, that means cocktail books. They’re still about this topic that I’ve devoted my life to, that I love so dearly, and yet because cocktails have precisely nothing to do with the work that we do it’s a subject free from any feelings of necessity or labor. They allow me to be creative and reflective and productive for no purpose but bringing myself (and Tania) joy.

Ryan Chetiyawardana’s ideas, more than anyone else today, have pushed cocktails forward; yet while a cocktail at his bar(s) might include mummified limes and palm & pine embalming cordial, this book is written to be spectacularly useful to somebody like my mother (who mended these jeans, by the by). This is, I think, a wondrously good idea. In fact, the first drink I ever plucked out of it was a punch for my uncle’s wedding (which my mother did indeed make), that was wonderfully forgiving in construction and incredibly beautiful in flavor. Yesterday I earmarked a martini of sorts that brings in flavors of peach and caraway. It’s got the juicy quaffability of a cosmopolitan but with the depth and sophistication of a Manolo Blahnik. And it kept me sane.

Incidentally, if you are still earning an income and you would like to spend it at Backbar despite their closure, they are running a raffle and scheduling cocktail classes, and soon will announce some special cocktail experiences all to support their furloughed staff. That’s all available at their website, backbarunion.com/shop While this sort of belies the bulk of this post, we will be donating our time running one such cocktail experience. Yes, with cocktails. We’ll post the details to that when Backbar announces it.

03/20/2020

I love a good side-by-side comparison. You can really learn a lot about your palate, as well as recognize subtle differences you might not notice by switching things up week to week or month to month.

Back before we started the bar, I (Tania) made cheese, and one of the fascinating things was tasting it over the course of the year, and how tasting it frequently revealed so much — the flavors (and color) changed with the seasons, depending on the cows' diet (and the climate's effect on the diet).

Nate and I have been tasting things together since we met. At one point I even created a subdomain on my website for our Side-by-Side project, but then we started the bar and it fell by the wayside. Still, I have some photos and notes from way back when (2013), and bring these here for y'all to enjoy today. (This post inspired by today's forthcoming side-by-side of 3 teas from Yunnan province in China, because, well, MEM Tea Imports has three of them, so obviously I had to buy all three to decide which I liked best.)

As per Nate's previous post, you can see he really doesn't say what he likes in these notes (and that he makes up weird spellings for things, which means it can get confusing as f**k when I let Nate do the labels for things in the freezer). However, here I added to the coconut milk note so I could remember what we liked best. As for the vermouths, I can tell you the Dolin wasn't my favorite straight, but it made the best negroni, and it was revelatory to discover the ingredient that was the yummiest solo was not at all the favorite in a standard house drink.