The Crow & Quill

Behind the bandstand is a mural of live oaks and a plantation house. A bacchanal is painted into the corner beside it. On a music night, a horn section sets up in front of both. Casey Campfield managed Joli Rouge for three years before opening this room in 2014. In 2016 he said a new bottle worried him: “Every time I get a new item in, I’m a little bit worried about it sitting on the shelf for years.” By then he had upward of 500 bottles on hand, 260 of them whiskey. They sat behind a carved wooden arch, a smaller arch inset at its center. Bottles stacked three deep. Whisky Advocate came through three years later and counted more than 300 whiskies, one of the largest selections in the state, in what it called a Dickensian-style drinking parlor with an unmarked street entrance.

The calendar makes the same case a different way. Meschiya Lake has played Lincoln Center and been named the Big Easy Awards’ top female performer three years running. The New Orleans singer returns often enough that the room announces her like a regular. Honky-tonk one week, Latin cumbia the next, a DJ spinning vinyl the week after that. Most weeks, that is a music venue’s calendar. It also happens to stock serious whiskey.

The Top Shelf list keeps its own kind of patience. Fire Walk with Me starts as an Oak & Grist gin. It rests four months in an ex-bourbon cask. The Osaka Manhattan drops rye for Hibiki Harmony and swaps vermouth for a Barolo Chinato. The Sazerac Forte reworks the classic with a higher-proof rye and a heavier pour of absinthe. The list also carries a low-proof section, On the Lighter Side. The Cappelletti Spritz and the Evening Repose live there. For a room that bills itself on music, that is a lot of attention paid to the shelf.