Inside the white clapboard building with no sign is Sagebrush, a new agave- and sugarcane-based cocktail bar from Christopher Ciesiel and his wife, Cristin Llewellyn, located in the Rosedale neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas.
The bar sits next door to Garden House, a charming coffee shop owned by the couple’s friends Jordan and Emily Fox, and the two businesses share a spacious, well-appointed backroom that serves as a bonus space for both establishments.
Though small—and a bit sparse compared to their first venture, The Campground—the individual design details of this bar stand on their own. Every element has been thoughtfully curated to evoke the arid beauty of the high deserts in America’s Southwest, right down to the custom arched cutouts, or nichos, built into the wall that serve as a spot to place a candle, the palo santo incense burning, the tall green cacti looming in the corner, and the cocktail in your cocktail glass.
With help from professional friends in construction and the arts, Sagebrush was a do-it-yourself project from start to finish. The artist Jennifer Walker and the couple came up with a custom color for the walls, and Ciesiel and Llewellyn watched in awe as Walker hand-troweled the walls to create the rustic adobe look they wanted. Modern Lark built their handsome, dark mahogany J-shaped bar, but Element Ten saved the day, creating the one wildly colorful statement neon light piece hanging above the bar (their first downward-facing horizontal installation), which adds a pop of color during the day, but washes the entire bar in a pinkish red hue at night, making it feel otherworldly. The neon light was based on rock formations and geodes. Logan Clark of Pilgrim Creative pulled everything together to create a cohesive brand.
Inspired by the mezcal bars they had visited in the Southwest, the drink menu at Sagebrush offers ten or so cocktails that Ciesiel and his team of bartenders have carefully crafted to be lighter, fruitier, fizzier, and funkier than those being shaken and stirred at The Campground, which is well known for its solid selection of classic cocktails. Sagebrush doesn’t serve food, but the location is close enough to downtown that this feels like a good way to start or end your night.
To really understand the drink menu, you must start with their signature cocktail, which is also named Sagebrush. It begins with Tesoro 55 Espadin, a spirit made in the style of tequila in Jalisco, Mexico, for eight generations. To craft this cocktail, Ciesiel and his team go through a rigorous process. First, they infuse the Tesoro 55 Espadin with Mexican cotija cheese before mixing the resulting spirit with guava liqueur, house-made orange sorbet, and lime juice. Then the entire mixture is clarified with whole milk and strained through a paper filter. It goes through a second straining to make sure it is crystal clear, and then the clarified cocktail is added to a keg and charged with CO2 to carbonate it. Luckily for us, Ciesiel has provided a short-cut version of the Sagebrush for you to make at home.
“This drink is on its fourth iteration, and I think we finally nailed it. We found that by carbonating the cocktail with CO2, it really brought out the creamy cojita cheese flavor that we desired,” says Ciesiel. “Cocktails are supposed to be fun. This drink is refreshing, savory, bubbly, fruity—everything I want in a cocktail.”
Sagebrush
- 2 ounces cotija-washed Tesoro 55 Espadin*
- .5 ounce Fruitful Pink Guava Liqueur
- .5 ounce orange sorbet
- 1 ounce lime juice
Shake firmly with ice, and double strain over a large ice cube into a rocks glass. Garnish with a fresh mound of cilantro.
*To make cotija-washed Tesoro 55 Espadin: Combine 1 liter of Tesoro 55 Espadin (if you can’t find this product substitute with a lowland tequila like Arette Blanco) with 50 grams of cotija cheese, allow to rest for 24 hours. Strain out the cheese through a paper coffee filter and use the remaining liquid to build your cocktail.