Brooke Lipman, who has owned Center Street Alley bar in Rutland for more than a decade, added a second downtown bar with the late June launch of the Mad Rose, a cocktail lounge at 42 Center Street.
Lipman said her new venue is “more upscale, with a different vibe for downtown Rutland.” She developed the cocktail menu with the help of Nicholas Capanna‘s Rutland-based Little House of Cocktails, an education and consulting business.
The Mad Rose’s seasonal cocktail menu includes drinks such as the Bitter Truth, featuring bourbon and Amaro Nonino Quintessentia with lemon-orange peel syrup, rose water and orange-cardamom bitters. The latter three ingredients are housemade.
“We juice daily. We make our own syrups. We make our own bitters. We even make our own ginger beer,” Lipman said.
Lipman, who grew up in Rutland, left Vermont after attending Castleton University to work in hospitality and real estate in San Diego and Tucson, Ariz. In 2011, she returned home with her young daughter, Madeline Rose, for whom her new bar is named.
When Lipman first came back, she said, “Craft cocktails weren’t a thing yet here, really.”
The bar can also make classics and nonalcoholic versions of most of its house cocktails, Lipman said. She is working on hiring a chef and expects to offer a menu of appetizers and snacks before the end of summer.
This article appears in Aug 2-8, 2023.
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