Mijenta
Mijenta

Cocktails in the Conservatory

New Cocktail bar in West Sonoma offers housemade beers, locally-sourced wines, and non-alcoholic options in addition to libations

story by Eric Marsh / photos by Kelly Puleio
The Hot Blooded cocktail.

Fittingly so, there is much foliage at Fern Bar. A plant grows from a pot next to a piano, vines cascade from hanging gardens spaced throughout, and varied spry fronds fill custom-built concrete planters. A tufted green leather banquette ties the room together, above which solid wood bookshelves display books and sundries (and more plants). On the opposite wall, clean lines of white marble lead from the bar to a counter with landscape windows before it. And it’s perhaps the lounge area—with couches, Tiffany lamps, and floral print wallpaper—that pays homage most to original fern bars from the 70s and 80s.

Fern Bar—which recently opened in Sebastopol, California—offers small plates (ranging from plant-based fare like its panisse as well as a vegan, gluten-free umami bomb, and more protein-forward dishes of crudo, beef tartare, and local lamb prepared multiple ways) but the venue is very much a cocktail destination. Sam Levy, former Bar Director at three-Michelin-starred Meadowood, and now co-owner of Fern Bar, along with Fern Bar’s current bar manager, Alec Vlasnik, worked laboriously to curate a cocktail menu worth making a trip especially for.

The Blue Dream—one of five of Fern Bar’s free-spirited options.

From their collaboration come innovative cocktails that reach far beyond the ordinary ‘twist on classics,’ incorporating local ingredients and even making their own nocino with unripe black and English walnuts that Levy hand-harvested from orchards in Oak Knoll District in Napa. His and Vlasnik’s approach is serious and their cocktails are adventurous as well as fun. The chief ingredient in The Naughty Toddy is Armagnac that’s been infused for a week with roasted Kabocha squash; once infused, the spirit is shaken with a mulled cider reduction, citrus, honey, and amaretto. The Whiskey for Breakfast mixes brown butter bourbon, lemon, balsamic, and maple syrup and comes garnished with a piece of thick-cut bacon. Lastly, there’s Vlastnik’s creation, the fiery Hot Blooded, a mix of reposado, mezcal, jalapeno-blood orange cordial, lime, and egg white.

The wine list is concise showcasing small-production Californian wines, and its beer selection includes two beers made in house which are slated to change with each season. If eschewing the heady stuff, there are alcohol-free options including the herbaceous, exotic Blue Dream made with Seedlip (a non-alcoholic spirit redolent of gin), blue lotus, spiced coconut cream, and blue spirulina.

Off in a nook is the lounge, with floral wallpaper and Tiffany lamps.

Fern bar is a bright, airy space, and its vegetation adds a feminine quality—classic fern bars from 40 years ago were designed to be homey, innocuous places that attracted young single women, which then attracted single men, and became singles bars. Its aesthetic, now, is a welcome change from the more masculine, Prohibition-era, speak-easy style bar that—while indisputably played a large roll in cocktail resurgence—have now become ubiquitous and somewhat stale. And it could be said that during times that can feel obumbrate, an illumined, fertile, option to sip libations in is much needed, and Fern Bar, offering just such a setting, along with its elevated, garden-to-glass cocktails, is a paradigm of what we’ll see on the bar landscape in the near future.

Fern Bar is located at 6780 Depot Street, Suite 120, Sebastopol, CA. Hours are Thursday-Monday from 4 p.m. until midnight, with music events nightly. Visit Website.

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