Tamu Curtis, owner and founder of Liberate Your Palate. Courtesy photo.

Tamu Curtis has found a home base for her Liberate Your Palate cocktail classes. Her public classes will start taking place in Sweet Spot Studio, pastry chef Jossie Lukacik’s baking class studio, in November.

Curtis launched Liberate Your Palate as a cocktail exploration program, where guests purchased a passbook and visited various restaurants for an exclusive cocktail and got a stamp each time. Most of the city’s best bartenders took part in the program.

“It really took off the way I thought it would,” Curtis says. “That went great, it expanded into Charleston, but it was just a lot of work and I was a one woman show. It just got to be too much.”

During her time running the passbook, Curtis spent hours chatting with bartenders, learning about spirits, and, of course, sampling drinks. She was invited to a class by Hendrick’s gin, which she attended even though she’s never loved gin. There, she learned how to use gin in a way that played up its natural botanical flavors and found she really enjoyed a good gin cocktail. She thought about how she could bring a similar experience to Charlotte.

“I just wanted people to drink better,” she says. “Like, when I come over to peoples’ houses and they offer me a margarita and they pull out the sour mix, I wanna turn and run out the door, because I’m like, ‘This is gonna be a long night.’ ”

In her classes, Curtis explains how easy it is to make a good quality cocktail using natural ingredients — cocktails that won’t leave you with a nasty hangover. The goal isn’t to teach aspiring bartenders, it’s to show people how easy it is to entertain with craft cocktails. Before landing the space in Sweet Spot Studio, Curtis hosted some classes at Hygge Coworking, but had to lug around her equipment and wash everything in her home kitchen. Having the space at Sweet Spot Studio means she can go a bit more in depth in her classes. Students will make purées and syrups, taking advantage of the induction stoves, for example.

“Before, I would say our classes were a more mixology 101, so now this gives us a chance to take it a little step further for those who have already been to the class a few times,” Curtis says. “Now, we have more to offer them.”

The classes last about two hours, and cover three cocktails. There is also a learning portion; for example, in a recent class, distributor Kevin Creasy came in to discuss what makes a whiskey a bourbon. Curtis leads the cocktail-making portion. The classes are small, with no more than a dozen seats, and cost $65 to $75.

Like Sweet Spot Studio’s baking classes, Curtis’s cocktail classes sell out quickly, though she also offers private classes. Her fall cocktail class on Nov. 2 has already sold out, but Curtis and Lukacik are doing a joint class on Dec. 6 called “Entertain with Desserts and Cocktails.” Get tickets here. —Kristen Wile