By Dina Novarr—
Old Hillside’s “Harlem Hellfighters” is a 112-proof bourbon-rye blend aged in French wine barrels for exactly 191 days. Why the precision? Because the plants in the ground and the liquid in the bottle tell the same story, one that certain people in Washington are currently trying to edit down to a sanitized highlight reel.
Old Hillside’s Harlem Hellfighters bottles serves as a liquid monument to the 369th Infantry Regiment, an all-Black unit that served on the frontlines in France for 191 days during World War I. That is longer than any other American regiment, full stop, and not just “longer than other Black regiments.” Because the U.S. Army refused to let white units serve alongside them, they fought under French command. The French, who had better things to do than invent a hierarchy of human worth in the middle of a war, awarded the entire regiment the Croix de Guerre. By aging this blend for 191 days in pinot noir oak from that same region, Old Hillside is doing what the National Park Service is being ordered not to do: connecting a physical place to the unvarnished truth of what happened there.
The weight of that history is intentional, largely because of who is behind the label. Old Hillside was co-founded in 2020 by Emmanuel J. Waters, who now runs it as CEO. In an industry still dominated by a handful of legacy family names, a Black-owned and veteran-owned distillery is its own quiet statement. Waters didn’t come up through the traditional distilling circuit; he spent years negotiating complex acquisition programs for the Department of Defense before pivoting to advising Silicon Valley tech giants on corporate finance. It’s the kind of career that teaches you exactly how institutions decide what gets funded and what gets shelved. When Old Hillside claims a bottle is “preserving history,” it is coming from someone who has spent his life inside the machinery of institutional memory, not someone bolting a history lesson onto a label as a marketing afterthought.
Waters also grew up inside the story he’s now bottling. As the son of a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and pastor, he spent parts of his childhood on bases in Japan and Germany. That global perspective is vital to a company built around honoring overlooked heroes. A kid who grows up on overseas military bases learns early that American history looks different depending on which flag you’re standing under, and that the version taught stateside rarely has room for the whole truth. Under his leadership, Old Hillside has become one of the fastest-growing emerging bourbon brands in the country, a testament to the fact that doing the historical homework is actually good business, even while federal agencies two thousand miles away are actively pulling that same homework off the walls.
I first encountered Emmanuel’s story, not across a boardroom table, but behind a bar. We were both the only brown people pouring drinks at a tech meetup in the LinkedIn building (a “peak San Francisco” setting where half the room is “at work” and the other half is working the room). It was peak AI gold rush energy with pitch decks flying around with buzzwords like “agentic” on it while people were barely masking their tech-no[ne] skills. While the room chased AI ghosts, Emmaunuel and I, we were
dealing in glass bottle elixirs born from soil, grain, and grit. The real story didn’t need a pitch deck.
That connection to the land feels particularly urgent now, as the Presidio itself fights off its own version of a hostile takeover. In February 2025, an executive order directed the Presidio Trust to gut its operations “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” Charter city enthusiasts immediately began pitching a “Presidio Freedom City,” envisioning 1,500 acres of federal parkland rezoned into a deregulated biotech playground. By April 2026, the entire board was fired by email. Their replacements weren’t historians or park rangers; they were tech lawyers and venture capital affiliates. While the 1996 Trust Act technically protects the landmark from becoming a casino, “technically illegal to fully sell off” isn’t the same as preservation. It’s just erosion with better legal representation.
This institutional erosion reveals a deeper, older reality that rarely makes it onto a commemorative tote bag: The Presidio and the country both turned 250 in 2026, and both foundings are built upon the same structural silences and missing names. When Juan Bautista de Anza’s party arrived in these dunes on June 27, 1776, they were a mosaic of Mexican, Indigenous, African, and European identities. They were founders, not guests. Seven days later, 56 men in Philadelphia signed a document regarding liberty just a few hundred feet from where nine enslaved people maintained the house where the president lived—two birthdays, one country, and the same structural blind spot since day one.
So, when I raise a glass of Harlem Hellfighters bourbon cut with Presidio dune bitters, I’m not just toasting a single anniversary. I’m toasting the overlap, the Presidio’s 250 years, America’s 250 years, and the 250 years Black Americans have been the pulse of the story and not just what feels like a footnote or a February addendum, but as the foundation. From the Anza march to Henry Johnson’s 21 wounds to a Black CEO pouring drinks at a tech meetup, it’s all the same fighting spirit.
That is the real throughline of Bay Area culture right now, and you won’t find it in the official commemorations or the plaques being “reviewed” in D.C. You find it in the bitters recipe shared here, made from plants that have survived on this exact land since before anyone thought to name it. These botanicals don’t wait for permission to return after a burn, and they don’t need an official placard to justify their existence. They simply refuse to disappear.
Pour the bitters neat. Here’s the toast: to the Presidio at 250, to the country at 250, and to the Black Americans who have been holding both of these birthdays up the entire time, whether the official program mentions them or not.
San Francisco-based Dina Novarr enjoys sharing her passion for fine wines, spirits, non-alcoholic craft beverages, and more with others.
Presidio Bitters
(Yields roughly 6 oz and the infusion time is 3 weeks. Combine all ingredients in a clean glass jar. Seal and shake daily for three weeks, keeping it in a cool, dark place. Strain through cheesecloth, then a coffee filter for clarity. Store in a dropper bottle indefinitely.)
2 tbsp dried yerba buena (Clinopodium
douglasii), the mint the whole city was
originally named for
1 tbsp dried yarrow flower (Achillea
millefolium), for the bitter backbone
1 tbsp dried heal-all (Prunella vulgaris), earthy and faintly floral
1 tsp dried California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), used sparingly, it’s assertive and slightly resinous
2 tbsp dried beach strawberry leaf (Fragaria chiloensis), for a green, tannic edge
1 strip orange peel, pith removed
1 cinnamon stick, cracked
8 oz high-proof neutral grain spirit (100-plus proof, so it can actually pull the bitterness out)
Every botanical in this recipe survives by doing the exact opposite of what current federal mandates are doing to public land signage. Yarrow doesn’t hide the wound; it treats it. Sagebrush doesn’t wait for permission to return after a burn. Beach strawberry doesn’t need approval to fruit in the sand. They are exactly where they have always been, regardless of who tries to edit the placard next to them. Note: Foraging in the Presidio is strictly prohibited. Please source these plants from a local native nursery to grow your own history at home.
Fighting Hell the Old-Fashioned Way
This is my take on a classic Old Fashioned, a drink that, like the history it honors, requires patience and the right ingredients. Now this is the night cap … the drink that brings this whole article together.
2 oz Old Hillside Harlem Hellfighters Bourbon or Rye
1 tsp brown sugar
3 drops Presidio Bitters
1 tsp water (omit if using simple syrup)
orange twist for garnish
Dissolve the sugar in water (or use simple syrup) and add the bitters. Add the whiskey and a large ice cube. Stir continuously for 15–30 seconds until well-chilled and properly diluted. Express the orange oils over the glass and serve.
Cocktails With Dina
Published on July 16, 2026
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