Chartering a cable car

Alicia Robinson

Local bartender Kristin Markley Woodward took a cable car from Corona

del Mar all the way to New York City.

Not the kind that runs on a track. This one comes chilled in a

martini glass, and Woodward will make it for you.

The Corona del Mar cable car, which Woodward invented, won her a

trip to New York and an appearance in a national advertisement in

this month’s Vogue magazine. A bartender and bar manager at Oysters

restaurant on Coast Highway, she was convinced to enter the contest

by two alcohol distributors she works with.

“She’s probably one of the most creative bartenders that I call

on,” said Shelby Gollinger, a representative of wine and liquor

distributor Young’s Market Co., based in Orange. “I can always go to

her, and she can play around with [new products].”

The drink, one of a number that Woodward has invented, was born

when a customer asked her to fix him a cable car and she was stumped.

“If I don’t know how to make it, I will search for it until I find

it,” she said. “There was no such thing as a cable car anywhere; you

couldn’t find it.”

All she had to go on was that it was rum-based. She decided to add

some Cointreau and a little lemon and lime juice, and she rimmed the

glass with cane sugar and cinnamon.

The contest was sponsored by Remy Cointreau, a French company that

makes Cointreau liqueur and Mount Gay rum, both of which are used in

the cable car.

The distributors asked Woodward to enter the contest in 2003 and

even gave her an application, she said, but “I threw it in the

drawer, and I never did it.”

This year they urged her again, and her recipe was picked as one

of the three best drinks. All three winning bartenders are featured

in the ad; the others are from San Antonio and Washington, D.C.

“[The judges] told me right in front of the other two winners that

mine was their favorite [drink],” she said.

She brought her mother to New York with her, and the two were

wined and dined by the liquor company when Woodward wasn’t busy with

her photo shoot.

In the ad, they call it a Cointreau cable car, but at Oysters it’s

named for Corona del Mar. Woodward said her regular customers and

friends were all excited about her national magazine debut.

“We couldn’t wait,” Gollinger said. “We kept calling all the

newsstands waiting for the issue to come out.”

After working at Oysters for about 4 1/2 years, Woodward hasn’t

lost her enthusiasm for creating new drinks. Some of her inspirations

come from the restaurant’s chef, she said, and she’s able to use

fresh ingredients like fruit because the restaurant gets deliveries

every day.

“Blood orange season is coming up,” she said. “I can’t wait.”

Oysters is at 2515 E. Coast Highway in Corona del Mar.