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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)

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. 

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!

 

The Bombay Sapphire/GQ Most Inspired Bartender Competition

Last week I helped judge the Bombay Sapphire/GQ Magazine Most Inspired Bartender Competition in Las Vegas.

My fellow judges were Tony Abou-Ganim, Francesco LaFranconi, and our host Tyler Florence. This makes me look awfully good in comparison!  

In the first round (that I did not judge), 46 bartenders from the US and Canada were judged on a single drink in shifts. From these, the top ten were chosen to compete onstage at the XS nightclub at the Wynn Las Vegas. 

The challenge for the top ten bartenders was a mystery ingredient contest- bartenders had 12 minutes to come up with a cocktail using the mystery ingredient before presenting it on stage. The ingredient in this case was Bombay Sapphire East, the newly-launched brand extension with lemongrass and black pepper added to the botanical mix.  Furthermore, the resulting cocktail was supposed to represent their home city in some way. 

The top ten bartenders were: 

• David Delaney - Boston 
• David Wolowidnyk - Vancouver
• Luke Edson - Omaha
• Matt Young -  Milwaukee
• Mia Sarazen - Los Angeles
• Chris Simmons - San Diego
• Adam Rose - Austin

The top three were: 

Second Runner-Up: Brandon Clements of Spruce in San Francisco. 

Naturally, Brandon used Fernet-Branca in his San Francisco-inspired cocktail. He also used Bombay Sapphire East, maraschino liqueur, Benedictine, Regan's Orange Bitters, and sage leaves. It was garnished with orange and grapefruit twists with a sage leaf. It was a nice classic-style cocktail freshened up with sage. 

First Runner-Up: Scott Mayer of Sra. Martinez in Miami.

Scott made a variation of a Negroni using Bombay Sapphire East, Cocchi Americano, Aperol, and a tincture of black pepper, grapefruit, tarragon, blueberry bitters, and lemongrass. It was served up with a grapefruit peel. It was pleasantly syrupy and bitter, just like the drink it is based on. The tincture (made within the twelve minutes) was a nice touch.

Winner of the 2011 Bombay Sapphire and GQ Magazine Most Inspired Bartender Contest: Bryan Dayton of Boulder's Oak at Fourteenth. 

Bryan's cocktail was fresh and delicious, used the orchard fruit and berries of Colorado, had a freshly-made sage simple syrup, and added Chartreuse that brought all of the elements together and gave it extra depth. Bryan did everything right and his drink was the clear winner. 

Here is the recipe - probably not the official version that will be announced later, but should be pretty close:

East Collegiate Peaks 
by Bryan Dayton

2 ounces Bombay Sapphire East
.25 ounces Yellow Chartreuse
.5 ounces Fresh Lime Juice
.25 ounces Sage Simple Syrup
1 ounce Pear Juice 
2 Blackberries

Shake and serve up.  

Congratulations to Bryan, the runners-up, the top ten, and everyone who made it into the competition!

A Ride-Along for the Bombay Sapphire/GQ Most Inspired Bartender Contest

On Thursday, I rode around to a bunch of bars in San Francisco with Nick Kosevich, co-owner of Bittercube and Bombay Sapphire ambassador. He was judging bartenders for the San Francisco leg of the Bombay Sapphire and GQ Most Inspired Bartender competition.

I figured I should see how it went as I am juding the national competition in Las Vegas on September 11-13. 

The competing bartenders were Victoria D' Amato-Moran, Matt Gunderson, Rosalind Holm, Michelle Lester, Joe Wyre, Brandon Clements, Evans Horn, Ronaldo Colli, Edgar Tamayo, Priscilla Young, H. Joseph Ehrmann (represented by Shea), Brandon Reim, Trip Hosley, Carlo Splendorini, Yael Amyra, Bill Kelley, Allison Webber, Daniel Dombrowski, and Andrew Marks. They represented bars Belden Taverna Restaurant, Thirsty Bear, Blue Muse, Waterbar, Spruce, Ozumo, Americano, Sheba Piano Lounge, Mandarin Oriental, Elixir, The Café, Sauce, Michael Mina, Circolo Ultralounge, Barndiva Restaurant, Jaspers Corner Tap and Kitchen, Solage, and Argus Lounge. 

I joined for just one day of the competition. I saw Shea at Elixir make a drink with black pepper, watermelon, honey, and Bombay Sapphire. 

I saw Evans Horn at Ozumo produce a spicy drink with Sapphire, Canton, Hum, Carpano, and cranberry bitters. 

At Waterbar, Joe Wyre made a drink with gin, Lillet, St. Germain, gin, and lemon juice to pair with a giant platter of oysters. 

Victoria D'amato-Moran at Belden Taverna made a cocktail with saffron-infused Bombay Sapphire, falernum, orange juice, lemon juice, and egg white. 

Brandon Reim at The Cafe made a drink with gin, maraschino liqueur, black cherry jam, gum syrup, and lemon; garnished with a thick slice of peel with orange blossom water in it to remove the egg white smell. 

And Yael Amyra whipped up one with Bombay Sapphire, vanilla bean-infused Dolin Blanc vermouth, yuzu, grapefruit, lemon, lavender and verbena-infused honey, egg white, lavender bitters, sage, and lemon verbena. 

But none of these delicious drinks won the contest. Naturally, it was the bar/bartender they visited just before I joined them:

Brandon Clements from Spruce won the contest and will be representing San Francisco in the Bombay Sapphire and GQ Most Inspired Bartender Contest in Las Vegas in September. 

Congratulations Brandon and see you in Vegas!

Bartending Techniques Seen at World Class 2011

In what should be my final post about the Diageo World Class Global Finals, I wanted to mention a few cool tricks I saw from bartenders that might be fun to experiment with. 

(A bubbling dry ice drink from Heinz Kaiser)

Henning Neufeld of Switzerland used vodka and ice, instead of water and ice, to cool his cocktail glasses. He said this was because vodka freezes at a lower temperature than water, you could get the glasses colder.

Other bartenders used dry ice for this same purpose, but there was a lot of dry ice around. 

Heinz Kaiser of Austria stirred one of his drinks with dry ice. Dry ice, as we know, is made of carbon dioxide and sublimates from the solid state to the gas state without turning liquid in between. In doing so, this cools the cocktail without dilution, but Heinz made the additional point that the releasing CO2 gas also carbonates the cocktail.

Manabu Ohtake did his bottle service pour through flaming cyprus wood chips. He did this not just to flavor it, but because both the flaming and the aeration from pouring softens the spirit.

Torsten Spuhn of Germany, seeking to recreate the flavors of brands of bitters that wouldn't be available at the contest (Indian customs forbid the importing of any alcohol and those brands weren't available), figured out how to use Angostura bitters as a base and flavor them with other ingredients on-site to approximate what he used back home. 

Good stuff.  

Contest: The Auchentoshan Switch

I've just learned that I'll be helping judge the finals of The Auchentoshan Switch contest in Las Vegas this October. I am already jealous of the person who wins. 

We'll pick a winner out of 20(!) finalists in Vegas to fly to London for a two-week job at  69 Colebrooke Row, one of the world's best molecular mixology bars. A UK winner in London will also land a job at an American bar (not allowed to say which but I think it's in New York). 

I am trying to convince Auchentoshan that they need a journalist to 'switch' and report from 69 Colebrooke Row also but that might take some doing... 

The contest is open through August 31. Bartenders must make two drinks in a video for a chance to be flown to Vegas for the finals. The full contest announcement is below. (If you see a link, click it to keep reading.)

World Class Round-Up on DiffordsGuide.com

I was in New Delhi all last week working both on reporting on the Diageo Reserve World Class Global Finals here on my blog and helping Simon Difford and his (ass-kicking) crew write a special edition of the online magazine and produce the official book that will come out later. Still working on that, actually. 

Over at DiffordsGuide.com, take a look at the write-ups on:

• Short bios of all 32 World Class Competing Bartenders
• The "gurus" and their challenges: Gary Regan, Salvatore Calabrese, Peter Dorelli, Dale DeGroff, and Daniel Estramadoyro. Read here. 
• Quotes about the winner, Manabu Ohtake. 
• A few hundred drink recipes.
• The launch of the new Johnnie Walker Blue Label bottle.
• And a highlight video. 

Plus there are a few thousand photos to look through in the galleries. Or click on the photo gallery link on the top of DiffordsGuide.com.

(Winner Manabu Ohtake of Japan. Image by DiffordsGuide)