During the pandemic shutdown in 2020, and just a year after Bar Agricole received a James Beard Foundation Award for outstanding bar program, Thad Vogler permanently shuttered his groundbreaking San Francisco bar. But “forever” isn’t forever anymore, and last summer, Vogler reopened Bar Agricole in a new Mission Street home, just two blocks from the original. But don’t expect a replicated experience.
“More and more, we’d been bringing stuff in, in collaboration with producers and importers, and sourcing spirits was what I’d been most interested in,” Vogler says. While his original plan was to focus on sourcing and online sales of these specialty spirits, the new bar gives Vogler an opportunity to lean more into the bar side of the equation (the original had significantly functioned as a restaurant), while also serving as a tasting room and retail space for the brandies, whiskies, and other spirits Vogler champions, including collaboration projects with producers.
“We’re betting on a trajectory with spirits that we’ve seen in coffee and chocolate,” Vogler says, comparing the current situation to the rise of coffee’s third wave, focusing on sourcing and a product’s origins. “I feel like liquor is moving that way, too.”
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