WHO WE ARE
Marleigh Riggins Miller is publisher, writer and photographer of SLOSHED! Begun in early 2005 as a way to keep track of her growing interest in cocktails and spirits while sharing those experiences with anyone who would listen—or read, as it were—the focus of SLOSHED! is on cocktails good, bad and indifferent, with a definite bias toward the classics, homemade ingredients and entertaining.

Marleigh is BarSmarts Certified and her cocktails have been featured on Los Angeles bar menus including Malo Cantina in Silverlake. She is a member of the Cocktails & Spirits Online Writers Group (CSOWG) and can also be found writing about cocktails on Serious Eats and Menuism. When not writing or shooting photos for SLOSHED!, Marleigh works as a graphic designer, gardens and favors cold Belgian ales.
(Photo Credit: Chelsea Riggins)

Daniel Miller is official cocktail taster and writes liquor reviews for SLOSHED!, with a serious predilection for bourbon and tequila. Redneck, archivist, and proud member of the blessed Mojave’s semi-landed peasant gentry, he enjoys a habitual disinclination to exertion in his spare time.
(Photo Credit: Amanda Colgan)

ABOUT THE SITE
We began this project when Marleigh accepted a pro gig as co-editor and writer for LAist after a few years of blogging and writing on other websites. SLOSHED! began shortly thereafter in May 2005 when we discovered the therapeutic qualities of cocktails: mixing, shaking, experimenting with flavors and textures, the strange and quirky nature of the discipline and its history. Oh, and drinking them.

Mixing drinks is fun. It’s relaxing and enlightening. Most importantly, it’s a craft and it takes practice, hence the birth of the blog. What began as an online journal of our fumbling attempts at making “real” drinks has turned into a project that spans cocktails, bars, liquor, distilleries and the many other facets of the liquor industry in general. It has been a wholly unexpected and incredibly fun journey.

SLOSHED! has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, InStyle Magazine, Imbibe Magazine, NOLA.com, Mutineer Magazine, Drink Me Magazine and Specialty Food Magazine, as well as on SFist and Springpad. SLOSHED! was also voted the 2009 Foodbuzz Best Cocktail/Spirits Blog.

A few general notes:

• We are not professional bartenders. Everything we know we learned from books, experimentation or people who know more than we do.
• When possible, we always try to work with high quality ingredients. When making drinks at home, use the good stuff. You’ll thank yourself for it.
• This site is intended for use by individuals who are of legal drinking age. If you are not of age, though we appreciate your interest, please come back and visit when you are.
• If you’re interested in more information on cocktails and the art of mixology, check out our drinking buddies to the right or catch up on your reading .

Sample, Disclosure, Copyright, Usage and Technical Information

SAMPLES
When we started this blog, we purchased every single drop of alcohol that made it into the glass. These days, we still buy a very great majority of our bottles, but liquor and PR companies have very kindly taken notice of our little workshop and occasionally send us bottles for use and review. Unless otherwise noted, you can assume that a bottle being reviewed was sent to us for free. That doesn’t mean that we are playing favorites, as at least 50% of the bottles sent our way never make it into the bar, let alone onto the website. Because this is our little empire, we cover those spirits and cocktails which tickle our fancy or offend us mightily, ignoring the vast middle ground of bottles which only leave us with that “Quoi?” feeling. There are, after all, only so many hours in the day. We do not guarantee good press—or any press—to the companies who send us free bottles.

With that caveat in place, we are open to trying whatever is sent our way—or, better yet, invite us to your distillery, brewery, winery or tasting room. We’d love to get a feel for your history, operation and technique, as well as taste your products. If you are interested in sending samples to be considered for coverage, here are our guidelines and procedures:

1. While we write primarily about spirits and cocktails, we are also big beer and wine nerds. Don’t be afraid to contact us about sampling your beer or wine—we’d be happy to consider covering it on the site.

2. There is nothing sadder than receiving a soggy box full of broken glass. Please wrap carefully, as even FedEx and UPS tend to drop boxes marked “fragile”.

3. While a 375ml bottle will allow us to taste your spirit, it doesn’t allow much latitude for proper tasting. We prefer 750ml samples, because we taste spirits neat and over ice, on more than one day, so that we can experience the full range of flavors and make sure we give each spirit a fair assessment. We also like to experiment with each spirit in cocktails where possible, since many readers come here looking specifically for those applications.

4. Press materials are great, but we don’t really need a whole book of brand-specific cocktail recipes. We want to know about the history of the distillery/brewery/winery; any information about production processes—raw materials, fermentation, barrels, aging, hops, grapes, physical location, etc.; whatever you have that gives us a complete picture of what we’re tasting. We’re sure your recipes are nice and all, but we care most about what’s in the bottle.

5. Speaking of bottles, while we do enjoy taking photos we’d love for you to send us some hi-res bottle shots to go along with the press materials.

If all of this sounds fair, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line about your product and we can sort out the details.

We’ve also been known to proselytize about cocktails, for fun and profit. We throw a mean cocktail party and love nothing more than teaching other people about the wonders of a well-made Manhattan, so look us up if you need a web-savvy, spirits-beer-wine-and-cocktail type for your next event, competition, festival or conference.

COPYRIGHT & USAGE INFORMATION
This work by Marleigh Riggins Miller / Daniel Miller / SLOSHED! is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

If you would like to use photos or writing from this site, all we ask is that you let us know. This is a time-consuming enterprise and we are happy to share our work provided you give attribution and are using these materials for non-commercial purposes.

TECHNICAL SPECS
The default font for this layout is Helvetica Neue. The site has been tested in Safari 5.0 and Firefox 3.6, but not Internet Explorer, Opera or Chrome, so we make no guarantees for performance on those platforms. We are eternally grateful for WordPress and the fine, creative people at Graph Paper Press for their awesome themes, as well as thankful to the people who developed these plug-ins: Akismet, All-in-One SEO Pack, Automatic SEO Links, AZIndex, Better Feed, Bird Feeder, Extended Comment Options, Flickr Photo Album, Maintenance Mode, No Self Pings, Similar Posts, Subscribe to Comments, WordPress.com Stats and WPtouch iPhone Theme. Without them, blogging would be infinitely more difficult.

For communications regarding the content or function of this site, the management can be reached via email.