Once a month, at Hogwash Whiskey Den in downtown Spokane, historian Renée Cebula takes a roomful of students through centuries of American and global history that trace the wars, immigration, tariffs, and changing tastes that have helped determine what ingredients end up in her students’ glasses. 

Monthly cocktail classes have evolved into a cornerstone of Raising the Bar Barware, the Spokane-based business that Cebula launched more than a decade ago. While at first, the business sold vintage barware at fairs and festivals across the Northwest, today, Raising the Bar is focused largely on education, and Cebula is expanding her workshops and lectures through collaborations with Spokane-area businesses and venues, including Commellini Estate and the Spokane Club.

Both properties have a rich history in Spokane, Cebula says, explaining that the Spokane Club represents a part of the city's drinking culture, while Commellini Estate, in North Spokane, shares a history of bootlegging during Prohibition.

“It’s new audiences, or I think of them as students, to kind of spread the word, the stories, the histories,” says Cebula, an adjunct history professor at Eastern Washington University.

At Hogwash, Cebula partners with bar program manager Simon Moorby and general manager Erin Fasbender, both partial owners, to run the workshops. Moorby and Fasbender handle mixology techniques, answer questions about spirits, and offer insights on flavor and palate, while Cebula provides a historical narrative. 

Each class has a theme, such as “The Rise of American Whiskey” and “The Many Lives of Gin,” whose history starts in the Netherlands and features the physician who invented it, she says. The concoctions are crafted in chronological order, keeping pace with Cebula’s historical narrative. 

This year, the overall theme is, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.” Each month, the workshop explores a country, history, and the origins of its major spirit. Past classes include Mexico and tequila, amari from Italy, and Irish whiskey. Her next class, scheduled Oct. 11, is, “The Taste of France: Absinthe and the Alps.” 

Launched five years ago, the monthly classes have built a base of repeat attendees, Cebula says. Classes typically sell out and are capped at about 30 students.

Cebula says building community has helped her build a profitable business over the past three years. She anticipates 30% to 40% revenue growth in the coming years with the addition of new classes and collaborations, she says.

"My speaking events remain popular because people want to be present — to learn in person rather than online," Cebula says. 

Raising the Bar also sells DIY cocktail bitters kits, dubbed Badass Bitters. Each kit contains botanicals, a booklet about the history of bitters, infusion instructions, and cocktail recipes — the alcohol is not included.

The Lilac City DIY Cocktail Bitters Kit is a tribute to Spokane that blends the flower’s essence with citrus, vanilla, and lavender. The Spokane House Aromatic Bitters Kit pays homage to the region’s land, blending Inland Northwest prairie sage with peppery spices and citrus to enhance whiskies, rum, and mezcal, according to Raising the Bar's website.

The kits are packaged in ornate, vintage-style branding inspired by 1907 whiskey labels that Cebula discovered while researching Spokane’s drinking history, which frequently arrived in whiskey barrels and local establishments bottled it themselves, adding their own labels, she says. 

Cebula, a born-and-raised Spokanite, attended North Central High School and received her bachelor’s degree in history and government from Eastern Washington University. She lived in Missouri for 12 years, where she taught secondary school and worked in professional development for history educators. She then returned to Spokane 20 years ago when her husband, who is also a historian, accepted a position at EWU.

Cebula’s entry point to the history of alcohol was through studying culinary history, she explains. Within the material, she kept coming across snippets about drinking history that began in the colonial era, or how servicemen in World War II were exposed to European foods, further piquing her interest.

When the federal grant program supporting her professional development work ended, she returned to EWU for a graduate degree in social history with a focus on American drinking traditions, she says.

“I was just curious what impact (servicemen's) experiences during World War II had on American drinking culture in the postwar era,” Cebula says. “And indeed, it did have an impact along with other factors.”

Her research prompted her to move backwards from the postwar era, to Prohibition, westward expansion, and the colonial era. She then worked forward again to the early 2000s and the current “cocktail renaissance” the country has been experiencing for a couple of decades, she says.

As Cebula dug deeper into drinking history, she also became interested in the objects that accompanied it. She began collecting the glassware, cocktail shakers, and other bar tools that proliferated alongside home bars in postwar America.

“I have always felt a connection to the power of objects,” she says. “They’re just things that are made, but for a reason. They take on meaning as we use them, as they become part of a ritual.”

Her collection eventually became the foundation for Raising the Bar. Inspired by mobile boutiques she encountered while traveling for work, Cebula converted a vintage trailer into a barware boutique on wheels. She spent about a decade selling items at vintage fairs, music festivals, and other events throughout the Northwest.

Cebula also incorporated history into her merchandise. Glassware was sold accompanied by handwritten tags explaining the style along with a cocktail recipe. The retail business proved lucrative and provided cash flow, but maintaining inventory, event travel, and long days left her with less time for the writing, research, and teaching that inspired the business.

Eventually she shifted Raising the Bar to cocktail classes. She still sells barware on occasion, but teaching has become the primary focus of her business, she says.

“I’m really teaching in a traditional style, how I’ve always taught history, but now in a very nontraditional setting — behind a bar,” Cebula says.