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Ray
Remembered
A Tribute to Ray Deter
of d.b.a. (March 19, 1957 – July 3, 2011)
Remembrance by Carolyn Smagalski |
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He was a bar guy. Unpretentious, smart, opinionated, obsessed
with good beer. He loved single malts too, and good tequila.
But above all, Ray Deter was warm, like the cypress wood music
room that made d.b.a. New Orleans so “hot.”
Ray’s passion for beer was personal, discovered in an
epiphany moment during his honeymoon many years ago. He had
married an English woman from Yorkshire, the same region that
sired British Beer Hunter Michael Jackson. All it took was “a
picturesque canal, a bicycle and a stop in an English pub”
for romance to begin — romance with cask-conditioned ales
like none he had ever had.
But Ray’s journey ended in Lower Manhattan when a silver
Jaguar collided with his bicycle on Monday afternoon, June 27.
By Sunday, July 3, Ray met the Maker’s Mark.
Ray and Dennis Zentek opened d.b.a. in New York’s East
Village in 1994. Think The Ginger Man on East 36th, Brouwer’s
Café in Seattle or the Falling Rock in Denver. In 2000,
the two men launched d.b.a. New Orleans, near the French quarter,
welcoming classics like Stevie Wonder, John Boutte and Clarence
“Gatemouth” Brown. Cheers magazine honored d.b.a.
with a Benchmark Award. By 2008, d.b.a. Williamsburg opened
in Brooklyn and quickly joined the East Village as a Good Beer
Seal bar.
Michael Jackson, the Beer Hunter, introduced me to Ray on March
23, 2007. We had traveled with Tom Peters and crew to New York
City for a Belgian beer festival at Heartland Brewery. Afterward,
we settled in at d.b.a. Ray and the Bard of Beer, as many called
Michael Jackson, were fast friends. You could see the connection:
a common sense of wit, March birthdays, Yorkshire, jazz, whisky,
beer and a shared respect between the two. Ray pulled out a
Methuselah of La Fin du Monde, a 9% abv Belgian tripel crafted
by Unibroue in Quebec. The experience was intense and the memory
vivid, despite the passing years.
“But,”
as Edward Young put it, “fate ordains that dearest friends
must part.” |
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| Carolyn Smagalski
is an enthusiastic personality with a penchant for the new and
the bold. As a freelance beer-journalist, better known as "The
Beer Fox," she presents to you the world of flavorful craft
beer, zestful beer cuisine, grand brewing establishments and
the landscapes that inspire great brewmasters. She is also an
alchemist extraordinaire, pairing over 30 years of cooking experience
with delicate blends of magical craft beer. |
