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Gegham Ghazaryan Wins the G'Vine Gin Connoisseur 2011 Competition

Last night was the grand finale, the Summer Ball, for the G'Vine Gin Connoisseur 2011 World Finals. For the contest the bartenders had to set up and decorate a bar, serve a cocktail all night, and win both the approval of the crowd and the judges. 

The cocktails were judged by Phil Duff, Audrey Fort of G'Vine, and Gaz Regan. The attendees of the ball were given 5 tokens each, which they could give to the bartenders with the best drinks at the event. 

Gegham Ghazaryan from the bar Xandom in Alicante, Spain, won not only the most tokens of the night but the competition overall. 

His drink was: 

Coupage Floral by Gegham Kazarian, Xandom, Alicante

1½ shots G'Vine Floraison
¾ shot June liqueur
¾ shot pink grapefruit juice
½ shot lime juice
½ shot cardamom and ginger syrup
¼ shot blueberry reduction (that had cardomom and many other ingredients in it)

Method:Shake everything except the reduction with ice. Strain into a crushed-ice-filled old fashioned glass. Dash the reduction on top. Garnishwith blueberry, ginger, cardamom, cassia, lime and grapefruit peel flambéd withFloraison and June.

For those of you who've been paying attention to the competition overall, here are the top winners for all the individual competitions.

Make Your Own Gin: David Wolowidnyk, Jeff Bell, Gegham Ghazaryan & Guillaume Ferroni

Speed Drink-Making: Torsten Spuhn, Solomon Siegel, David Wolowidnyk & Guillaume Ferroni & Javier Ruiz Vera

Free Pouring: Terry Cashman, Michael Pazdon, Jill Saunders

Aroma Exam: Gegham Ghazaryan & David Gonzalez, Jeff, David Wolowidnyk & Guillaume Ferroni

Written Exam: Michael Pazdon, Torsten Spuhn, Guillaume Ferroni

Summer Ball Cocktail (Judges): Gegham Ghazaryan, Jill Saunders, David Wolowidnyk

Summer Ball Cocktail (Crowd): Gegham Ghazaryan, David Gonzalez, David Wolowidnyk

So there were a great representation of people winning different challenges and honestly I had no clue who was going to win overall until it was announced. 

It's been a great week and a pleasure hanging out with these awesome bartenders. This was a tough competition to win, so a huge congratulations to Gegham Ghazaryan!

See more photos on the Alcademics Facebook Page.

Speed Pouring and a Slow Boat on the Charente: G'Vine Gin Connoisseur 2011 World Finals

On the day before the last in the G'Vine Gin Connoisseur 2011 World Finals here in Cognac, France, the contestants entered the Speed Pouring Challenge.

The contestants had to make the same drinks as in the speed mixing competition - two Gin and Tonics with different tonics, a Jasmine (gin, Campari, Cointreau, lemon), Floral Martini, and a Negroni. This time, however, they needed only to pour the spirits in the glasses they'd be served in without jiggering.

They were then measured for accuracy in quantity. I believe the slowest time was around 21.5 seconds and the fastest at 54 or so seconds. (The slowest time was by celebrity guest Gary Regan!)

After the competition, we took a boat ride down the Charente River to the La Ribaudiere restaurant.

We took the opportunity to use the boat ride for a capella karaoke.

Then at the restaurant the bastards had the non-competing bartenders (the hangers-on like myself and Gaz Regan) make the punch. Nobody told me this trip was going to be hard labor.

Currently it's Friday, the last day of the contest. The bartenders are taking a two-hour written exam while the bloggers are blogging. Tonight is the grand finale Summer Ball - more to follow - along with the name of the winner - tonight or tomorrow!

Aroma Seminar: G'Vine Gin Connoisseur 2011 World Finals

The third challenge of the G'Vine Gin Connoisseur 2011 World Finals is all about aroma. First contestants (and bloggers) learned about aroma and then took a quiz about it.

In the seminar, we learned about the link between aroma and emotion, and aroma and memory. These links are not even logical- if you hear a dog barking or bad noises when you’re in a rose garden, in the future when you smell roses you may associate that with an uncomfortable sound. 

Bad smells are useful for self-defense too - a large portion of people who are hurt in fires have a compromised sense of smell - they didn't smell the gas or the smoke. The loss of the sense of smell causes loss of appetite, diminishes quality of life, and causes accidents as above.

We then did an exercise where we smelled an aroma and created an image in our mind- a shape, a color, a piece of music, or a place. Everyoneended up chosing a pastel color. The shape was roundish but not defined – I chose a cream colored egg.

We classified odors by intensity and learned the difference between intensity and tenacity. Intensity has to do with the highness of the note (so lemon is way up there) whereas tenacity is the length of the scent (cardamom is a medium intensity but high tenacity odor). Citrus notes tend to have a high intensity but low tenacity; chocolate has a medium-low intensity but high tenacity, as does vanilla and licorice root (used for that purpose in gin), sandalwood and cedarwood have low intensity and high tenacity. 

We learned about synthetic and natural fragrant molecules, and how each are important in perfumes - often they are mixed and it's less common to have synthetic-only perfume. Often the discovery of an important fragrant molecule leads to the creation of a great perfume- this happened with Chanel No 5 and Aldehyde C12 MNA, discovered in 1903.

 After the class, the contestants sat down to a test. 

We won't know the winners until later...

Gin-Blend: G'Vine Gin Connoisseur 2011 World Finals

The second round of the G'Vine Gin Connoisseur 2011 World Finals in Cognac was a challenge to blend a gin from distilled ingredients. But first the contestants learned how G'Vine is made. 

First a grape neutral spirit is produced on a column still. Then four other distillates are made: one of grape vine flowers, one of juniper, and two more of multiple botanicals. In the final stage, all of these distillated are blended together and then redistilled in the pot still. (Images of the distillate makeup are at the end of the post.)

With that in mind, the finalists were given a set of distilled ingredients and asked to blend their own gin. The goal was to have it be a consumer-friendly, commercially-viable product. 

I didn't get a chance to try any of the final gins, so we'll have to wait and see who won this round...

Click below to see pictures about the makeup of G'Vine gin.

Speed Round: G'Vine Gin Connoisseur 2011 World Finals

 
The first round of the G'Vine Gin Connoisseur 2011 World Finals was the Speed Drink Making Round. The fifteen contestants from around the world had to make two Gin and Tonics with different tonics, a Jasmine (gin, Campari, Cointreau, lemon), Floral Martini, and a Negroni. 

I don't know the winner yet, but here are some pics of the contestants doing their thing.

Click below for more.

Live from Cognac: The G'Vine Gin Connoisseur 2011 World Finals Week

Hello from Cognac! I'll be covering the G'Vine Gin Connoisseur 2011 World Finals taking place this week, along with Emma of Gin Monkey. 

There are three days of challenges and fifteen bartenders in the competition, which culminates at the G'Vine Summer Ball in Cognac on Thursday evening. 

Last night we arrived from various places in the world and picked the bars corresponding to each bartender at the Summer Ball- important as the attendees will vote for their favorites and help choose a winner from among them. 

And it's always a good thing when a week starts out with someone being blindfolded. 

Join me for posts here at random European hours, follow along on the G'Vine GCP 2011 Facebook page, and follow GVineGins on Twitter.