Two years ago Martin Doudoroff of CocktailDB came to Berlin. Our executive editor Tanja Bempreiksz had come in touch with him, when she traveled through Australia and the United States, visiting bars and writing about them in the German blog project Mixologist.
Tanja called me up one day and asked me, if I´d host Martin together with her, as he wanted to see some of Berlins bars. As I had come across his great web project CocktailDB before, I was more than happy to share a drink with him and introduce him to some of Berlin´s finer drinking dens.
When we came to Victoria Bar in the course of the night, that many people judge to be one of Berlin´s best classic bars, Martin turned to us and asked us: "Now I´ve come all the way to Germany and I´d really love to sample some of your regional products that I can´t get back home in New York." He pointed at Victoria Bar´s backboard and asked us: "So which spirits do you recommend?"
Tanja and I both looked up and down Victoria Bar´s backboard and we both couldn´t depict one single spirit or liqueur from our German speaking countries. And we both were very ashamed of being in that situation. We explained it to Martin and he took us to task: "Who else will maintain your local tradition, if you´re not taking care of it? This is what we´re coming here for!"
Some days later back in the office I decided to establish a regular column in Mixology magazine, that would feature exclusively new and niche beverage products from Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Truth is, that many of the spirits brands we have over here, put on dust and are not used any more, because a) the big spirits mergers of the last decades brought in stronger world brands and b) the companies owning these regional brands didn´t wake up to the challenges of a changing consumer world. This means many of these brands weren´t given marketing budgets and redesigns. So younger consumer generations didn´t get in touch with them and they went out of production or were only to bee seen in the off-trade, as bars didn´t consider them premium enough to stock.
I suggested the idea to my business partner Jens and he loved it. We both played around with it and with the country names. Finally we found out that GSA sounded best, incorporating all 3 nations: Germany, Switzerland and Austria. We started with the column Made in GSA and it proved to be an immediate success with our readers. They´re now using the term GSA as if it was a long established phrase. GSA now stands for the whole German speaking central European region, where our Mixology print magazine is distributed.
Thanks, Martin, for pushing us into the right direction! And I hope that Victoria Bar did hear that call as well over the last two years, as they tend to be a bit conservative at times. ;-)
When I asked Die Sachbearbeiter some time back to create a label for the GSA column, they tried the national flags and some bottle images wearing them first. As it all looked really cheesy and "oktoberfesty" we went for that very straight and simple "stamp look" you see above.
More of our labels to be found here…
P.S. By the way: I was born in Switzerland and I´m half Austrian and half German, so there was some personal motivation involved too in creating that GSA label. ;-)
Helmut Adam
Helmut Adam ist Herausgeber von Mixology, Magazin für Barkultur, trinkt gerne Negronis, Tequila und den einen oder anderen Gin & Tonic. Bevor er sich zum Bar Manager an der Mixology Bar aufschwang, arbeitete er als Bartender in Zürich, Wien, Berlin und London.
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