Written by: Matt Sloan

Stereo Embers has learned that Milk & Honey’s Sasha Petraske has died.

Petraske founded the New York cocktail bar back in 1999 when he was just 26 years old.

Since then, the bar singlehandedly brought back to life the institution of the cocktail, but reinvented it in the modern era, using an innovative twist on pre-Prohibition cocktail standards. Milk & Honey’s idiosyncratic methods included no advertising, no outside signage, and a reservation system too bizarre to understand.

The Lower East Side bar is credited for bringing the cocktail back into American culture.

Petraske went on to open Little Branch in Greenwich Village; Dutch Kills in Long Island City, Queens; Middle Branch in Midtown Manhattan; the Varnish in Los Angeles; and the Everleigh in Melbourne, Australia.

Petraske had just moved to Hudson for a consulting assignment and was expected to not live there permanently.

The Manhattan-born Petraske’s body was found by his wife Georgette Moger, who he had married in May of this year.