Jayson Wilde, co-owner and bartender at Bottle & Barlow

Editor’s Note: In the print edition of our August 13 issue, a picture of Jayson Wilde appeared with the wrong Q-and-A. The entire SN&R team feels embarrassed by this mistake. The correct interview with Wilde will appear in its entirety in the August 20 print issue. We are very sorry!.

Somehow, Jayson Wilde exudes infectious positivity even during a 17-hour workday. Maybe it’s easy to be perpetually grinning when you’ve just opened Bottle & Barlow, one of the most gorgeous bars—with one of the most daring cocktail programs—in town. The Sacramento native got his start bartending at Shady Lady Saloon after a 12-year stint at an insurance company, utilizing his generous paid vacation to go on tour with his punk band the Whiskey Rebels. When tour bookings slowed down, he needed a new escape. He found it behind the bar: “It’s very much like music to me in that you have an audience, you have creativity, you can deliver something to that audience and they can like you or dislike you,” Wilde says. His passion led him to manage the bar at Bourbon & Branch, a pioneer in San Francisco’s booming cocktail scene, for four years before returning home.

Someone orders a vodka tonic. Are you insulted?

Not at all. We’re actually like, “Thank you!” One less thing I have to shake! Really, we like doing all of it. We just want people being happy with what they get.

I’ve never seen ponzu in a cocktail before. How’d you come up with that?

I have a group of friends that think of all these stupid names for drinks and I thought I could throw my name into that hat. I was reading an article about Japanese cooking and … was just looking at all these flavors and ingredients and came across ponzu. I know the American version is soy heavy and it’s not actually the same as the Japanese one, but I wanted to do an umami cocktail that touches all flavor spectrums. I had this dumb name, “The Ponzu Scheme,” so I built the drink around that. We have salty, smoky, juicy, rich, briney—it’s crazy all over the place.

Yum. What’s that cocktail-naming process like in general?

I just have lists upon lists of ideas. Everything is an inspiration, from music to eating at my favorite restaurants to talking to my friends about books or characters. With “Cal Worthington,” growing up and seeing that guy on TV all the time, I thought it would be fun to do something with that. Now I’m working at the bar and I’ll hear someone laughing about the name, like, “Oh damn! I remember that guy and that dog he always had!”

Any flavor combos or ingredients you find really overplayed in the cocktail world right now?

Ginger is super huge. We have a mule variation, a cucumber variation—they’re those things you see all the time. But I don’t know if I think anything is overdone. It’s fun to see people have different takes on things. It’s not all about coming up with something insane and crazy every single time, it’s about having a variety that people are comfortable with. If you have a cocktail with cucumber or elderflower, people are going to think, “Oh, I’m safe, I know this.” Next thing you know, you’re chatting and you can push them to try something else.

What do you predict for the Sacramento cocktail scene?

I feel like the diversity will stay. That’s one thing that makes Sacramento unique as opposed to San Francisco, where everything is turning into a cocktail bar. We still have a lot of dives. I don’t see that changing and I think that’s really cool.

Compare Sacramento and San Francisco bar patrons.

It all comes down to money, honestly. I’m not saying Sacramento is necessarily frugal but they are more conscious about how they spend their money, whereas in S.F. people just have loads and loads of money and they’ll drop 200 bucks a night and not even think about it … And people just drink more in S.F., like at lunch, they’ll have a cocktail or a beer. Here, it’s an iced tea with lunch. I think that’ll probably end up changing since we’re getting more and more metropolitan by the day.

Still playing music?

Yes, I play in two bands, the Setting Sons and Suburban Threat.

Wow. How do you find the time?

I don’t. (Laughs.) Right now, it’s really tough because I’ve been getting this open. As soon as the seas calm a little bit, I’ll get back into it. I miss it already. I need get behind the drums again—I need to get blisters on my hands so I can get them stained with angostura bitters when I go to work!