The Dirty Sue Martini is a success story on and off premise.  It is the preferred choice of the best barmen in the business.  Just look at the luminaries and media that endorse it in the image below. 

I see distributors working hard to promote craft bitters to no avail because the Holy Trinity and a few other standards, still look down from high above and dominate the category!  In order to be successful with bitters you need a clientele that specializes in cocktail culture which most liquor stores do not. 

If you were to shift the warehouse space to Dirty Sue you’d find it to be enormously profitable in comparison. The branding and the package do all the hard work for you on the shelf.  Once you got it rolling you’d be buying multiple pallets every month. You can build a better relationship with your clients by offering Dirty Sue!

Dirty Sue is a great cocktail mixer for a reason.

• One Eric doesn’t mess with the brine which comes from Andalusia Spain. It’s not the stuff used to pack olives in jars.  It’s what they age olives in prior to packaging.  He  filters it several times and blends it with Spring Water till the flavor is olives. It won’t ruin your top shelf gin or vodka, it enhances it!

• No BS stories about using a one ton press (that’s what they used to use to make Olive Oil) just brine and water and we skip the preservatives and additional salt.

• It is also great in Bloody Mary’s, in Bloody Maria’s and Margaritas and a variety of other  cocktails you can view on our recipe site. Barmen will also water it down a little more and  put it in a dasher bottle to use sparingly to add salinity to cocktails.

Dirty Sue Cocktail Garnishes

• Grade A Extra Large Andalusian Olives from Spain’s top DOP.  They have a firm bite and taste noticeably better than all the other olives on the market.

• The Pimento and Jalapeno Stuffed Olives are very popular.  However, for our clients the #1 garnish is the Blue Cheese Stuffed Olives.  The secret is ET uses real Wisconsin Blue Cheese so it has a creamier bite than the concrete bricks the other makers use.

• The XL Cocktail Onions and the crazy good in a Gibson Cocktail. They and the wicked good Jalapeno Stuffed Onions pair really well in Cocktails where olives and pickled onions make an interesting garnish. The Gen. Patton Martini and Bloody Mary’s & Marias come to mind. 

• In Florida the Double Stuffed (Garlic & Jalapeno) Olives, which happen to be the most expensive garnish in the line, are #2 in sales behind the Blue Cheese Stuffed Olives so I am making a point to recommend this sku.  Price is not an object with Dirty Sue as consumers come to the brand looking for bigger and better!

• Dirty sue is #1 On and Off Premise in every market we have placement.

• The package does all the work for you as the graphics are great and the name is a cute play on words!

The Spice Mix from Dirty Sue is nothing like the Bloody Mary Mixes you see on store shelves.   When combined with spirits and a fresh bottle of tomato juice it creates a flavor profile and mouthfeel like nothing you have ever tried before. It’s light years better than even the best small batch mixes I have tasted over the years… 

I sampled it with Tequila the first time just because because Vodka tends to bore me.  However I went out and bought a handle of Kettle One the next day and it has been really popular entry at my COVID cocktail parties ever since.  

ET is a searcher…  and he’s been fascinated with the way top barman approach their Bloody Mary recipes around the country! A while back he had his Eureka moment with this staple of the cocktail scene and below Craft Spirits will share the story of how he got there! 

This Article was published in Craft Spirits Magazine…

Dirty Sue, created by long-time LA bartender Eric “ET” Tecosky (Jones Hollywood), creator of the bottled premium olive juice category and maker of fine cocktail garnishes, announces the launch of Dirty Sue Bloody Mary Spice Mix.

All natural, gluten free, and vegan Dirty Sue Bloody Mary Spice Mix is now available.  Ask your distributor about this NextGen Mixer Each 16 oz bottle of tomato juice-free Dirty Sue Bloody Mary Spice Mix can yield approximately 21-32 drinks depending on how spicy or flavorful you prefer your Bloody Mary. That’s almost three times more than a traditional 750 ml bottle of tomato juice-based Bloody Mary mix makes.

Dirty Sue Founder Eric ‘ET’ Tecosky has been working on his Bloody Mary Spice Mix for over a decade. The recipe originated during his time as Bar Manager of Jones Hollywood in Los Angeles. Soon after launching Dirty Sue Premium Olive Juice, which he formulated specifically for use in dirty martinis, he decided to put some time into another passion – Bloody Marys. The mix at Jones hadn’t been updated for a while and, inspired, he sensed there was room for improvement. Afterall, how hard could it be? 

He was about to find out.

While on his annual pilgrimage to New Orleans for Jazz Fest, ET started to pay close attention to the city’s Bloody Marys – some of the best around. He noticed how many bars infused their vodka with pickled goodness – olives, onions, green beans, etc. He had enjoyed them for years in ‘vacation mode,’ but now it was time for a little R&D. Back in LA, he started to tinker and taste and was moving solidly in the right direction, but the mix still needed something.

More tinkering and tasting. And for the second time since asking himself why nobody bottled olive juice for dirty martinis, a lightbulb went on. OLIVE JUICE – that was it! He grabbed a bottle. He played around with the ratio until, Eureka! The olive juice that was only supposed to be for dirty martinis became the secret ingredient to the new mix, providing a full, round, delicious umami experience.

Now, rather than ET asking himself, “How come nobody bottles this stuff?” It was his guests at Jones who wondered aloud – and frequently – why he didn’t bottle his Dirty Sue Bloody Mary? The answer wasn’t so simple. First, how to capture the flavor from the infused vodka into a stand-alone spice mix? The answer was many, many trips to the spice store and, yes, many, many tastings. Second, how to make it less perishable than traditional mixes? This was an easier fix: no tomato juice. That could be added per drink! The hard work paid off and, after a decade of on-again, off-again R&D, Dirty Sue Bloody Mary Spice Mix is in the bottle and on shelves.

Nickel Dime is now Absinthia’s Craft Cocktail Syrups… Yes she recently bought out her partner Jared.  So there have been a few label changes that look fantastic.  These are  Advanced Cocktail Syrups and are all over the current trends in Cocktail Culture!  Not only do they allow consumers to create Restaurant Quality Craft Cocktails at home with ease, for the more adventurous these syrups can be used to do riffs on all manner of stirred cocktails as well.  

Gift Sets are a wonderful way to introduce consumers to advanced syrups and mixers.  In fact it does all of the hard work for you on the shelf!  We see this strategy work with bitters sets all the time!

Absinthia’s Craft Cocktail Syrups are a hot commodity online. And fit the mold of what several distributors who specialize in cocktail culture have told me are their best sellers which happen to be in the advanced mixer category. 

Absinthia’s Craft Cocktail Syrups come with a slew of recipes for easy to make Craft Cocktails at home. If you also work with the on premise trade they also come in bulk formats.

In addition these advanced syrups can also be used in stirred cocktails to jazz up any that call for a sweet modifier.  Good examples are Old Fashioneds The Cherry Bomb works with Bourbon or Rye and Caged Heat work with Tequila, Rum or Bourbon.  Fairy Dust is a substitute for Absinthe in many ways. It can be used with any recipe calling for an absinthe wash.  I make a Gin Old Fashioned with a tsp of Fairy Dust and 2-3 dashes of Orange Bitters that’s sensational.  

The founders of Absinthia’s Craft Cocktail Syrups

Absinthia Vermut is an entrepreneur with a passion for making things that help others make better cocktails. Her first taste of absinthe was in 1996. She served her first bootleg bottles to friends a few months later on April Fool’s Day 1997, where she received the nickname, Absinthia. She continued making absinthe until suddenly one day, March 5, 2007 to be exact, the ban on absinthe was lifted. Never expecting absinthe to be legal in her lifetime, she knew she wanted to produce an organic absinthe. 

In 2013, she legally changed her name to Absinthia (Vermut is on her birth certificate), trademarked it, and founded Absinthia’s Bottled Spirits, LLC in order to bring her organic absinthe to market. Finally able to sell her absinthe legally in September 2017, Absinthia™ Organic Absinthe Superieure began to appear in bars, restaurants, and bottle shops and won its first gold medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2018. Six awards and one year later, Absinthia Organic Absinthe is currently available in California, New York, and Louisiana. Absinthia is a member of the Women’s Cocktail Collective.

Jared Hirsch is a Mixologist, Bar Manager at Oakland’s Sidebar.  He has won multiple awards for his cocktails, syrups and bar program, including the Four Roses National Cocktail Challenge at Tales of the Cocktail, Jameson’s Movember Competition, and was a finalist in Belvedere’s National Project (Red) competition in New York.