Gary "Gaz" Regan: 1951 - 2019
photo by Jimi Ferrara
Paying tribute to a kind soul who loved a good drink
Gary “Gaz” Regan, who passed away this weekend at the age of 68, honed his talent for speaking the language of hospitality with eloquence and intuition starting at a young age. Born in 1951 in Lancashire, England (or “Blackpool” as he referred to it), he had already become a successful bartender by his early teens, working at his parents’ pub the Prince Rupert in Bolton. This experience informed his further chef training at Courtfield Catering College, where he learned to make pizza. One of his first entrepreneurial pursuits was making pizzas for local establishments. This was the 1960s when pizza in the UK wasn’t a thing. But pizza is good drinking food. Gary knew a good combination when he tasted it.
After a quick marriage to his first wife at age 20, he came to the states at age 22 and settled in New York City, where he soon found work at an Irish bar on the Upper East Side. He worked in numerous bars around town before eventually becoming the bar manager at the North Star Pub in the South Street Seaport in 1991.
I didn’t make the connection until years later, but Gary was my bartender there in the 1990s. At the time, I was in an unhappy marriage. A group of us, including my then husband, would often hang out at the North Star for Friday dinner and drinks (they had an awesome fried seafood and chips platter). On a night my then husband was in the throes of what had become a typical routine of immature, drunken fatuity amidst enabling friends, I decided to take a minute by myself. I approached the bar and ordered an Irish whiskey and soda, which I wanted to sip seated at the bar, not take back to the table. The bartender handed it to me, rapped on the bar to indicate it was on the house, and said something to the effect of, “I’ve been there, darling. You’ll find a happier place to dock your boat someday. Until then, come visit my port any time.”
By the 1990s, Gary had already written books on American whiskey (before it had even enjoyed its official resurgence again as a category), the Bartender’s Bible (did anyone else know to associate bartending with religion 1991?), some cocktail recipe books (Martinis mostly) and penned a few articles, before publishing the first edition of the Joy of Mixology in 2003. In 2006, when I was hired as the assistant spirits buyer at Astor Wine & Spirits, this was the first book I read on the business I was about to throw myself into. However, I did not make the connection that the author was the kindly bartender at the North Star, which had closed around 2001, until a few years later.
2003, the year of that book’s publication, was also a seminal year for Gary in other ways. There was a reason I didn’t recognize his face, or his voice, at first. He had survived tongue cancer, and though he came through a bit physically diminished, he returned with even more of a purpose. Having made the move to Cornwall-on-Hudson, he started Cocktails in the Country, a two-day intensive mentoring course for bartenders and bar professionals (he called it “mindful bartending”), which many in their tributes have cited as some of the most valuable 48 hours in their careers. This was when Gary became “Gaz”, and also developed the recipe for Regan’s Orange Bitters No. 6, as well as further spreading his philosophies, guidance and humor through various consulting gigs, as a judge for bartending competitions, and taking part in brand sponsorships and promotions. He also started the Worldwide Bartender Database, which spotlights recipes from different bartenders around the world—from bars big and small. Getting a recipe recognized by Gaz and published in the database was like having one’s name in lights on Broadway for a couple of days, although the honor of the recognition lives on in the eternal flame of the internet.
I wasn’t ever going to attempt bartending. I’m too introverted, and lack the physical coordination to simultaneously mix, shake and chat, but the Joy of Mixology was still a valuable resource for someone like me. There were ways I could use his time-honored guidance, both in the book, and from his increasing internet presence, as a salesperson, as a spirits buyer, as a writer, as someone who uses my voice to convey information about this business, and as a human. This book, quite simply, helps people be better to other people. It should be required reading for anyone embarking on a public facing career, from any angle of hospitality but also anything from nursing to political science.
photo by Amanda Schuster
I never got to tell Gary I finally made the connection that he was my North Star hero, but I did get to meet him in person a few times and have some memorable interactions with him on social media. In many ways, he was regarded as a rock star. So when I asked for suggestions for books outside of the boozesphere for winter break, I was thrilled that Gary almost immediately responded. His pick? Keith Richards’ autobiography. Earlier this year when I wrote my David Bowie and cocktails article, Gary volunteered his one and only recipe contribution to Alcohol Professor—”Ziggy Stardust”, a boozy, stirred concoction made with Caorunn gin (“unusual and fabulous,” he called it), Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao (for the orange hair), and Danzig Goldwasser (for the stardust).
Gary was someone who simply loved fun. There are many valuable passages in the Joy of Mixology, and useful advice for bar professionals. However, one of the things I love about Gary as a cocktail historian is that he is the only person I have ever known in this business to say that the 1980s and early 1990s—which most drinks “professionals” dismiss as being in the dark ages of the cocktail life cycle—are interesting. “For me, this was an exciting time in the world of mixed drinks; somebody was putting the fun back into drinking. We’d spent so much of the 1980s hearing about the hazardous effects of overconsumption, and it seemed as though a whole generation of customers entered adulthood being warned they could have a drink provided they didn’t have a good time. I dubbed the drinks of this period [like Sex on a Beach, Fuzzy Navel, Windex, etc.] Punk Cocktails, because they seemed like liquid versions of bands like the Sex Pistols—they certainly didn’t harmonize well, but they sure as hell made themselves heard.”
Gary died of pneumonia on Saturday. He is survived by his wife Amy and his cousin Ken Armstrong. And thousands of finger-stirred Negronis made around the world in his honor. We will miss him terribly.