Looking for an on the water getaway on the mid-Atlantic with a bit of interesting booze’ history. and a signature cocktail that will immediately take the edge off & the crimp out of your dad-drive shoulders? The Tides Inn in Irvington VA is such a glorious throw-back to simpler times, we thought it was well worth a shout-out. Hospitality is the absolute king at the Tides Inn and one feels like you’re walking back into a lost atmosphere at the resort. I love an era of bar, an era mostly lost in today’s flavor of the month restaurant mentality, and the Tides Inn delivers on all counts. Dark, cool, welcoming, a view & a bartender that knows what they’re doing. Try that Lancaster Lemonade if ever there. You won’t be sorry. Here’s a brief piece of the Tides Inn’ liquor history from G.M. Gordon Slatford –
The Tides Inn
Lancaster Lemonade
The Tides Inn is a quaint small resort on the northern neck of Virginia which is gaining a lot of “notoriety” for its customer service and quality. Named the #1 resort in Virginia by Travel and Leisure magazine readers in both 2011 and again in 2012, it is a home away from home with remarkably good food and a location and views which are quite breathtaking.
Built in 1946 in a county which was dry, the Tides Inn has all of its bar area lined with walnut wood liquor lockers used in bygone times for guests to keep their alcohol in. The Stephens Family who built the Tides had little time for the puritanical few who decreed that alcohol and drinks were the devil’s brew and that it was really quite sinful to sit out on The Tides Inn’s terrace and enjoy a beer or it’s newly created house specialty, the “Lancaster Lemonade.”
Guests checking in before alcohol was allowed would pay $1.00 to be a member of the Chesapeake Club, an organization which ran the bar and was absolutely created to defeat the alcohol free rules of Lancaster County. Once the membership fee was paid, a key was given to the guest and they would immediately take the Tides Inn’s boat across the river to Urbanna where a multitude of naughty alcohol and beer vendors were eagerly waiting to take their money and send them back to The Tides Inn with a box of wines and spirits, sufficient to keep the guests happy and joyful for the extent of their stay.
Eventually, the puritanical few made way for a state liquor control board who realized that the state of Virginia could make good revenue by selling alcohol, and the lockers became forlorn and empty while the bar was lined with bottles and happy joyful people who would spend their time eating and drinking some of the finest food and wine in the state.
This is sounding like a fairy tale, but it is all true, and these lockers are used today for corporate groups who use them for memory games or just as a talking point.
The Lancaster Lemonade has become the #1 selling drink at the Tides and was created by a small team of the Tides Inn’s management and staff in the winter of 2010. There was snow on the ground and no guests to be seen, so Gordon The General Manager and Mine Host, along with others, created a plethora of different drinks in the Chesapeake Club. One was universally decreed to be the best, and it is now served proudly as the Tides Inn’s Signature Cocktail.
Lancaster Lemonade
Take the juice of half a freshly squeezed lemon; add a shot of Limoncello and a shot of Vodka; place in a personalized Mason Glass and add pinwheels of lemon. Add ice and top off with Northern Neck Ginger Ale; garnish with fresh lemon balm from the Tides Inn’s herb garden, and you have what we call “A Southern Sippin’ Sensation.”
Enjoy!