Raise a glass

‘Slow drinks’ enter the fast lane

- HANK ZONA

The Slow Food Movement was started in Italy in the late 1980s as a cultural antidote to the rise of fast food, but also to highlight and celebrate local and traditional growing and making. When Danny Childs created the name Slow Drinks for his media presence, it was not prompted by brashness but by the passionate application of many of the tenets of the food movement toward creating delicious things to drink.

Childs emphasizes taking foraged and farmed botanical ingredients from the region and using traditional methods of making wines, beers, ciders, spirits, meads, sodas, shrubs, syrups and tinctures. He also emphasizes seasonal craft-level production based on what nature provides. “I want to run out of ingredients and use up whatever the land provided me in any given season.”

One only needs to visit The Farm and Fisherman Tavern in Cherry Hill to get a better understanding of the cornucopia of what New Jersey provides Childs in this regard, packing an already well-chosen drinks menu with his creations and flourishes. He holds the title of bar manager there, but his business card may as well say “Grand Wizard.”