Allen Katz is exceptional among New York saloonkeepers in that his bar, the Shanty, operates under a license held by his distillery, New York Distilling Co. in Brooklyn. And he is exceptional among New York home bartenders because his home bar is like a liquid library. It’s a stately center of spirituous operations in which happy personal artifacts mingle with bottles speaking seriously to the craft of mixing and the art of living.
The distillery, founded in the neighborhood of Williamsburg in 2011, now turns out five products—three formidable gins, a 90.4-proof rye whiskey, and Mr. Katz’s Rock & Rye, which is a candy-sweet throwback to the days when characters drank it in John O’Hara novels.
