Dear Ottawa: Say hello to 66 Gilead's "Wandering Bitters."

It was just a few weeks ago that I was thinking of showing off some of the nifty bitters from my buds at 66 Gilead Distillery in Prince Edward County to some of my barkeep acquaintances in the Market, but also appreciating the inconvenience that that sort of sampling involves -- the synchronizing with folks when they're not busy, the rushing them through the tasting when they'd like to sit and ponder and experiment, possibly for a day or two or three, and so on.

And then it hit me.

Crowdsampling.

That's the word I'm using here -- "crowdsampling" -- and here's how it works.

We're loading up a small bag with a delightful collection of 66 Gilead bitters, at which point I'm simply going to hand it off to my favourite local Market barkeep, cocktail wizard Stephen at The Black Tomato. Inside the bag will be a short set of rules for how this will work, and I paraphrase and condense thusly:

• When you receive the bag, you drop me an e-mail telling me you have it.
• You can experiment to your heart's content for, say, 4 or 5 days.
• You pass on the bag to someone else, and e-mail me telling me where it's gone.
• Repeat.

Crowdsampling: letting the crowd decide where the bag goes next without any assistance from me. Brilliant, n'est-ce pas?

And let me introduce you to the boys, all 12 of them:

They would be:

• Black Walnut
• Cherry
• Orange
• Lavender
• Violet
• Silk Road
• Snake Root
• La Fee Verte (Absinthe)
• Smoke
• Hops
• Ambrosia
• Rose

You can find brief tasting notes on all of these at 66 Gilead's online store, the bitters page. And if you're interested, you can follow along on social media, tracking one or all of:

• Twitter handle "canadiancynic"
• Twitter handle "66gilead"
• Twitter hashtag "#WanderingBitters"

Heck, we might even set up a Facebook page, because we're high-tech like that.

In any event, the Wandering Bitters have officially started wandering, and we will be tracking their migration pattern as they make their way around town. This should be interesting.