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The 2011 Suntory Cocktail Award

In Japan on October 31 I attended the 2011 Suntory "The Cocktail Award," the finals of Japan's largest cocktail competition with about 1000 entrants. As you can see in the photo below, the awards were a big production. 

At this competition, the 18 finalists competed in three groups.  Each of the groups used a different required ingredient in their drink (Lejay Cassis, Beefeater Gin, or Hibiki 12). A winner was chosen from each group and an overall winner was chosen from those three.

The contest was held and judged by IBA (International Bartender's Association) rules. These are very formal rules- bartenders present bottles before pouring each ingredient, wipe the bottles after pouring, stir each container of juice before using, etc. Bartenders use a little touch of flair but it's still all very formal less they lose points for messiness. 

Bartending in Japan is pretty formal anyway, and despite its new popularity in the US and around the world the drinks aren't at all similar to how they are made in the US and especially dissimilar to contest drinks. Most bartenders shook their drinks and I didn't see any bitters being used at all. The drinks are heavy on flavored liqueurs, and as I learned in the Japanese bartending seminar I attended last year, drink color is important and blue is not considered a bad color. 

In Japan they use cobbler shakers - the three piece ones with the built-in strainer- so they hold the shaker with two hands (so the cap won't fly off) and every bartender puts their own spin on the shake. It would be cool to have a video of Japanese shaking styles versus American. Our big, flailing, overhead gesticulating versus their frontal, short, angular, piston-like movements. 

Each of these drinks had a tiny piece of gorgeous garnish. To save time in the competition, they only put it on one of the drinks they made out of the four or so they had to produce for the judges.  

The winning bartender from each of the three groups gets a cash prize and will visit the US on a trip where hopefully Japanese and American bartenders will learn from each other. 

This year's winner was Masako Ikegami of Bar Shake in Ginza, Tokyo. Not only did a woman win the overall contest, but all four women of the 18 finalists won either first or second runner-up. 

Tamayura
By Masako Ikegami of Bar Shake 

Hibiki 12yo 30ml
HERMES Green Tea liqueur 15ml
Mozart chocolate Cream 10ml
Fresh cream 5ml

(Photo courtesy of Suntory)

Cocktail Preview: Plum Bar in Oakland, California

Plum Bar, located next to Plum, opens tonight in Oakland. The drinks are by Scott Beattie, he of Cyrus/SpoonBar and Artisanal Cocktails fame. The Bar Manager is Michael Lazar, co-author of Left Coast Libations. 

The space is one long bar with a good amount of room for standing between it and the wall behind, plus a small back area with couches. With the quality of both the food and drinks I tried, I think this is going to be a very popular bar.

I went for a press preview night and tried some of the drinks. Overall they are fresh, seasonal, and alive and zesty, and with Beattie in charge you know they're giving you good garnish. The drink below is the John Chapman, made with bourbon, pear eau de vie, apple juice, and ginger. 

The Thai Monkey contains Beattie's signature use of coconut milk. 

The house Negroni, called the Dry Rye Negroni, contains the new St. George Spirits Dry Rye Gin, and the drink almost tastes like a genever Negroni. The Bruleed Old Fashioned is just a delightful variation on the drink with High West Double Rye, caramel syrup, orange bitters, and lavender aroma. 

The Rad Radish includes pickled radishes and parsely, so it's a combination of vinegar and herbs. 

The bar food menu contains snacks like quinoa fritters smoked fingerling fries, and some 'heartier' foods like the buttery grilled cheese sandwich and a burger. 

For the entire cocktail menu (subject to change), click the link below if you see one.

Charles Joly Wins the Auchentoshan Switch US Competition

Last night I helped judge the Auchentoshan Switch competition in Las Vegas. Nineteen bartenders competed for a chance to work with Tony Conigliaro at 69 Colebrooke Row in London for two weeks. 

They'd submitted videos on YouTube and the top 19 finalists were chosen.

(Headshots of most of the bartenders. Note Charles Joly's hand-drawn entry.)

In Vegas, in the first round they had to prepare a signature drink with Auchentoshan Three Wood.

From those, we had to choose five bartenders to go to the next round. This was really tough to do - the drinks were nearly all amazing. The judges were able to pick our first four without too much arguing, but the choice of the last person was excruciating and each of us wanted a different bartender for different reasons. After a fairly angsty debate, we picked Charles Joly, Steve Schneider, Clinton Terry, Michael Flannery, and Abigail Gullo to go on.  

The next round was Iron Chef-style. From a mystery basket they had to use two ingredients in a cocktail. This round was also tough to judge! Four out of the five drinks were extraordinary and all showed a huge amount of skill. But choose we did: Charles Joly and Clinton Terry went on to the final round. 

The final round was two bartenders giving a master class about Auchentoshan. They took different approaches: Clinton Terry focussed on tasting notes and Charles Joly focussed on production.

From this we picked the winner: Charles Joly! 

(Portrait of the artist as a contest winner.)

Man, that guy wins a lot of contests. Probably because he is *that good*. Congratulations to Charles Joly for winning and congratulations everybody else for making this the most difficult cocktail competition I've ever had to judge. 

 More pictures are here. 

Two Health Insurance Options for Bartenders

There are now two newish options for bartenders to get health insurance. 

1. USBG

The United States Bartenders' Guild now offers full insurance plans (previously they only had discount health plans that are not the same thing) through Custom Benefit Consultants. 

2. RBA

I also just leared of the Responsible Bartenders' Association, another bartender (and related professions such as servers) that offers health and other insurance through a company called HLP. What they did was partner with TIPS (Training for Intervention ProcedureS) to show that their member bartenders take responsibility seriously, which helped them negotiate insurance discounts. Thus you need to join the RBA ($49 annually) plus take the TIPS certification to be eligible (I think they start around $40, with certification lasting 3 years).

I can't vouch for the insurance plans or the ease of getting them for either membership association, but the more options the better! 

A Cherry Heering Tour of Copenhagen's Best Bars

During a recent trip to Copenhagen, I stayed an extra day to explore (and revisit) its bars, courtesy of the Danish Cherry Heering liqueur. My job was to run around and drink Cherry Heering cocktails at the best bars in town: tough job!

I began at Ruby, one of the city's most stylish bars. (I previously posted the menu here.) I had two drinks there, mixed up by Nick Hovind. The first was the Harvard Dropout, a spin on the Cherry Harvard that is usually made with cognac. 

Harvard Dropout
From Ruby in Copenhagen

1 dash Peychaud's Bitters
20 ml Noilly Pratt Vermouth
20 ml Cherry Heering
40 ml Talisker 10-year-old Scotch

 Stir, serve up. Garnish with a cherry. 

Then I moved on to the next drink:

Cherry in the Rye
From Ruby in Copenhagen

40 ml Wild Turkey Rye Whiskey
10 ml Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur
3 Danish Cherries
10 ml Cherry Heering
30 ml Lemon Juice
10 ml Sugar

Shake, serve over ice. Garnish with Danish cherry.

The next bar I visted was Moltkes Speakeasy. I think it is only open on Fridays. The building in which its housed dates back to 1702, but it is now owned by some trade guilds and has a Michelin-starred restaurant in the basement. The back bar is a cabinet built into the wall that may have once held financial books. The space is wonderful, the tiny bar in the front serving two rooms of tables.

They serve classic cocktails; nothing too complicated or modern. That said, I had a modern classic cocktail there - the Copenhagen. The drink was created by Gromit Eduardsen, owner of the bar 1105, for a Cherry Heering cocktail contest in 2009. I visited Gromit's bar last time I was in the city. 

The Copenhagen
By Gromit Eduardsen of 1105

2 cl. Cherry Heering Liqueur
5 cl. Bols Genever
2 cl. Lime Juice
2 cl. Sugar Syrup
1 dash Angostura Bitters
Orange twist  

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. 

Next up at Moltkes, I had my favorite scotch cocktail and one of my favorite classic drinks of all time, the Blood and Sand. It has equal parts scotch, Cherry Heering, sweet vermouth, and orange juice. 

Then it was on to my next stop, Restaurant Umami's U-Bar. The bar is chic, but at the time of the night I was there it was rather unpopulated. The bar carries an enviable selection of Japanese whiskies, plus sake, soju, shochu, and other Japanese ingredients.

There, Chris Doig served me a Night Blossom. The drink is usually served with a cherry blossom liqueur, but he substituted Cherry Heering in it, along with shochu, apple juice, and Calpico, a milk-based soft drink. 

After that I went over to MASH, or Modern American SteakHouse. The restaurant is part of the same group as Umami. The place has a terrifying rabid cow on the sign- yummy? 

The place was jam-packed (it was Friday night, after all) with young professional-sorts out for dinner and drinks in groups after work. The only Cherry Heering drink they had on the menu was the Cherry Alexander, a verion of the famous brandy drink made with Germain-Robin brandy (they specialized in small batch American spirits, especially brandy), Cherry Heering, cherries, chocolate liqueur, cream, and muscat wine. 

The drink was tasty, but just because I was drinking a dessert drink doesn't mean I was at the end of my drinking for the night.

My final stop of the night (and I'll note it was only my final stop because I got lost trying to find the next bar after this one) was Union. I love this bar, and you probably will too. It feels like home base. I posted the cocktail menu here. 

Almost (but not quite) faster than I could drink them, the cocktails kept coming out, courtesy of Geoffrey Canilao. He made me four drinks:

• One with champagne, Creme de Violette, Cherry Heering, and a lemon twist.
• A second called the Danish Sour, made with Maker's Mark bourbon, lemon juice, Cherry Heering, and ginger beer. 
• A third made with rye whiskey, Lillet, Cherry Heering, and orange bitters. 
• A fourth made with cognac, Cherry Heering, pineapple, egg white, and ginger wine. 

After that came my ill-fated attempt to hit 1105 which ended in me wandering the streets of Copenhagen apparently unable to read a map. Eventually I got some sense and hailed a taxi to return to my hotel.  

Thanks to Cherry Heering for making the night great. 

Stockholm Bar Scene Report

While on a trip with Purity vodka, we were given a talk by Mathin Lundgren about the Swedish bar scene, specifically in Stockholm. This was great because I had just been to Stockholm two months earlier with Karlsson's vodka and had seen a few of the bars first-hand. 

Lundgren says the Swedish bar scene really kicked off about twn years ago, after a few Swedish bartenders moved to london and worked at LAB and other bars, then came home with new skills. More recently, other bartenders have been influenced by working at Milk & Honey and thus Sasha Petraske's influence reaches even to Sweden.

In talking about trends and developments in the Stockholm bar scene, Lundgren identified:

• A return to the respect of the career of bartending
• Hand-crafted cocktails
• Better ice (and the recognition that spirit-forward cocktails with fewer ingredients require better ice)
• Knowledge of spirits
• Better training (As of 3 years ago they have a government-sponsored, year-long education program somewhere outside of Stockholm.)
• Travel - Bartenders are traveling a lot, getting inspired by other scenes, and bringing ideas home. (And as a good example, I've now met Mathin in Sweden, Denmark, and New Orleans within three months.)
• The mixologist trend (bartenders with their heads down cranking out only one drink every five minutes while customers wait) is starting to fade
• The science/molecular trend came and went
• As modern bartenders refocus on both drinks and customer service again, a newfound respect for the older generation of working bartenders
• Bars with standards. Previously drink quality depended on who was working at the bar at the moment, whereas now bars are enforcing better training and standards so that every drink tastes good no matter who makes it.
• The return of flair, but just little flourishes of it rather than juggling.
• Connectedness of bartenders thanks to social media and good bar events. 

Other than a government-sponsored bartender training program, he could be talking about New York or San Francisco. It's a small, small world. 

New Bar Alert: Prizefighter in Emeryville

Opening in mid-November from Jon Santer and Dylan O'Brien: Prizefighter. 

You'll know Jon Santer from all over San Francisco over the last decade: Bruno's, Tres Agaves, Range, Bourbon & Branch, Beretta, and most recently the brand ambassador for Hendrick's Gin. He's since retired from that position to open the bar, along with Dylan O'Brien,  co-owner of Bloodhound in SOMA and Churchill at Church and Market. 

The space is the former Kitty's in Emeryville. You might think the name comes from that bar's fisticuffial reputation: a 180-person bar brawl that happened there in February. Nope. Nor is it a boxing-themed bar. It's named after the Eels song Prizefighter. 

The bar has 1800 sqare feet of space inside and a patio with an additional 1000 square feet. The goal, according to Santer, is to create "A world-class bar in a casual and fun environment." He say's they're not trying to be a San Francisco bar and you're unlikely to see any sleeve garters on the bartenders.  

The beverage program is pretty intense though: three types of ice (Clinebell blocks, Kold-Draft big cubes, and Scotsman small cubes) and a drink menu divided into nine sections:

• Cocktails
• Beer (cans, bottles, draft)
• Wine (some on bottle, some on tap)
• Punch
• Sangria 
• Patio Drinks - communal drinks like cocktails by the pitcher
• "Soda Fountain" Drinks - not a true soda fountain nor non-alcoholic, but tall refreshers that you can drink several of without getting loaded.
• Mezcal, served neat in small and large ceramic containers
• The Oaxacan Stand-Off - a combination of copita of mezcal, a sangrita, and a little beer

Santer said the goal of the drink program is to embrace "Sessionability: The ability of a beverage to be both delicious and highly drinkable in great quantities while leaving the imbiber lifted but not legless."

It sounds like I'll be spending weekend days there. They hope to be open at that time (after permit approval), and at 5PM the rest of the week. 

To entertain patrons during the long hours of low-alcohol imbibing, they'll also offer shuffleboard and invite food trucks to serve customers. 

Prizefighter
6702 Hollis Street
Emeryville, CA

Opening mid-November 2011 

The Auchentoshan Switch Contest Finalists

The Auchentoshan Switch, a cocktail contest in which the winner will get a 2-week stint working at 69 Colebrooke Row in London, takes place on October 26th. I'll be there in Las Vegas to help judge it. 

They've announced the 20 finalists who will be flown to Las Vegas for the event:

- Jeff Bell from PDT, New York City
- Amber Berry from Ward III, New York City
- Gina Chersevani from PS7’s, Washington, DC
- David Curiel from Dalva Hideout, San Francisco
- Michael Flannery from Michaels, New York City
- Abigail Gullo from The Beagle, New York City
- Dev Johnson from Employees Only, New York City
- Charles Joly from The Drawing Room, Chicago
- Mirjana “Mindy” Kucan from Grand Prize Bar, Houston
- Jason Littrell from Death & Co, New York City
- Ian McCarthy from Boiler Room, Omaha
- Alexandra Parks from Green Russell, Denver
- Zachary Safron from Metro, Lafayette
- Steve Schneider from Employees Only, New York City
- Rachel Sergei from The Jack Rose, Washington, DC
- David Shenaut from Kask/Rum Club, Portland
- Ezra Star from Drink, Boston
- Lucinda Sterline from Little Branch, New York City
- Clinton Terry from PX, Alexandria
- Jenn Tosatto from Manifesto, Kansas City

I know about half these bartenders already - a pretty awesome group! 

There is also a UK side of the event - those bartenders are listed here. Congratulations to the finalists and see you soon in Vegas!