Rickhouse
A rickhouse is the warehouse where bourbon barrels sit while they age. Heat rises, so a barrel on an upper floor ages faster and comes out at a higher proof. This one won Best High Volume Cocktail Bar at the 2011 Spirited Awards.1
Why go
One wall is brick left over from the 1906 fire, ash still in it. The rest of the room is reclaimed wood and old bourbon staves. The shelves run to a twenty-foot ceiling.2 There are two bars and a mezzanine you can watch the floor from.
Brian Sheehy opened it in 2009 as an extension of Cask, his group's spirits shop. That group, Future Bars, also runs Bourbon & Branch and Pagan Idol.7 Anything poured here can be bought by the bottle at retail. The list ran sixty cocktails at opening, printed on newsprint with an illustrated glossary of drink terms. Punch still comes made to order in antique bowls.
Before 2009 this door was Ginger's Trois, a gay bar Don Rogers had run at 246 Kearny since 1991.3 Future Bars kept it going a few months. Then it closed and reopened as this. Ginger's came back around the corner in Hardie Place, in the same building.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Kentucky Buck, strawberry-infused bourbon with lemon and ginger beer.4
- Order: punch, if there are four of you.2
- Order: something off the whiskey shelf, neat. That is what the back bar is stocked for.
- Avoid: Sunday, when the bar is closed.8
What locals & experts say
- Camper English, 7x7, February 2024, listing the Kentucky Buck among the city's fifty iconic cocktails:
Invented here, and world famous.
4 It was on his 2019 edition of the same list too.5 - Brian Sheehy, to 7x7 the week the bar opened in 2009: to understand the place,
you need to see it as an extension of Cask.
2 - Will Kamensky, The Infatuation, May 2018: it is a tiny spot on Kearny with an impressive number of liquor options. It works after work if the group is small.6
Good to know
- Getting in: walk in.
- Where: 246 Kearny Street, in the Financial District.
Verdict
could-visit — The happy hour runs on weekdays. Upstairs the mezzanine takes twenty and the parlor forty-five, if you are booking something.