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Snoop Dogg, Texas bar industry help nation’s largest spirits festival mark 15th year

Kallhoff, Eakin, Orth, Hartai
Among those representing Dallas at Tales were Justin Kallhoff of DEC on Dragon; Eddie Eakin and Matt Orth of wine and spirits distributor Southern Glazer’s; and barman Mate Hartai of Black Swan Saloon.

Could Dale DeGroff have imagined that, some 25 years after he began squeezing fresh citrus and making simple syrups in the service of better cocktails, he’d be among the elder statesmen of a 20,000-strong spirits festival? Yet there he was – King Cocktail! – with his signature wry smile, at New Orleans’ Hotel Monteleone, flaming orange peels and cranking out drinks like a champ at Tales of the Cocktail, the spirits festival that last weekend concluded its 15th run.

Tales of the Cocktail
The annual cocktail festival, based in the French Quarter, draws about 20,000 people.

A bartenders’ walking tour: That’s how all this started. Back then a lot of people still thought of bartending as a temporary gig you did on the way to something else – but the spirits industry is now a $25 billion-dollar beast, and Tales is likewise a juggernaut, with people traveling to New Orleans from 40 countries for five days of booze-related workshops, career advice, happy hours, tastings, competitions, parties, bonding and networking. What was once a manageable, almost intimate gathering of industry professionals riding a wave of love for the craft and quality ingredients has, in some eyes, become too big for its own good, an overcrowded, over-the-top party of sold-out seminars, ever-accumulating wristbands and fewer one-on-one opportunities.

Tales of the Cocktail
At the festival’s pisco tasting room, cocktail luminaries Tony Abou-Ganim and Dale DeGroff hammed it up for the camera.

“Tales has become, to me, more about learning one-on-on through networking than in seminars,” said Brittany Koole, a bar manager and consultant in Houston.

It didn’t help that the stretch of Bourbon Street normally frequented by Tales-goers was a war zone of giant potholes, wire fencing and bulldozers. “I didn’t feel the same connection with the area,” said Justin Kallhoff of Dallas event space DEC on Dragon, who spent more time off the strip and less time dealing with the big parties.

Just the same, Tales carried on, the thus-far clear leader in the spirit-festival world.  As usual, attendees this year included a good number of Texans – bartenders, bartenders-turned-spirits-reps, bar owners, bar suppliers, bar goers and those who chronicle it all.

Laura Bellucci, SoBou
At SoBou, Laura Bellucci’s dessert-like House of the Rind – featuring honeysuckle vodka, lemon curd and chamomile-citrus bitters — was among the festival’s cocktail highlights.

So there were Brian McCullough and Mandy Meggs of The Standard Pour in Uptown, who staffed a table at Saturday’s mezcal tasting room at the Monteleone. And Campari America rep Chase Streitz and Megan McClinton of Thompson’s, in Fort Worth, were among those who joined Jimmy Russell, the legendary master distiller for Wild Turkey, for dinner and whiskey at Cochon. “I was lucky enough to get to pour Jimmy a glass, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Streitz, formerly of Bulldog Gin, The Standard Pour and Sissy’s Southern Kitchen.

Cazadores Tequila partnered with the Bartender Boxing Organization to sponsor a battle between Houston and Los Angeles bartenders that culminated at Tales. And in a bowling event pitting bartenders from 14 cities against each other in the lanes, Team Texas took second only to Miami.

The Standard Pour
Brian McCullough and Mandy Meggs of The Standard Pour in Dallas poured drinks at Tales’ mezcal tasting room.

Major spirits companies, small-batch distillers and beverage-related producers also come to Tales to build or bolster brand recognition. But possibly the fastest growing group of attendees might be people who just like consuming and learning about spirits and the various things made with them – people like Jean Verhaar of Houston. “We are what you call cocktail enthusiasts,” she said, at the festival with pal Pam Stevens of New Orleans.

The festival draws more “cocktail enthusiasts” every year. At top, pals Verhaar and Stevens; below, the Davises and Lawyers of Mobile.

On Thursday, Steve and Beverly Davis of Mobile, Alabama, roamed a tasting room dedicated to pisco, the clear brandy native to Peru and Chile. “A little waitress at Galatoire’s told us about (Tales) some years ago,” Beverly said. The two have been coming ever since with friends John and Sue Lawyer.

“It’s just fun,” Sue Lawyer said. “There’s no purpose to it but to learn and have a good time.” She ducked over to one drink station where DeGroff, now widely considered the godfather of the modern cocktail renaissance, was busy making Algeria cocktails for the masses.

Tales of the Cocktail
At Tales, numerous tasting rooms offered attendees the chance to sample spirits or liqueurs — straight, or in cocktails — like this set-up from Sonoma, Calif.-based Uncle Val’s Gin.

It was at New York’s Rainbow Room that DeGroff built a following by reviving classic, pre-Prohibition cocktails in the 1980s, a gig he landed a few years after being hired by restaurateur Joe Baum, the man behind the Four Seasons and other fine dining establishments; the Alegria – pisco, Cointreau and apricot brandy – was among the cocktails featured at Baum’s La Fonda del Sol in the 1960s, at a time when anything not a Manhattan or Martini was rare. Now DeGroff had revived it as the Algeria, with his own twist, for the pisco event. “Because (Baum) was my mentor,” he said.

Tales of the Cocktail
Snoop Dogg at Friday’s Dogg House Party, sponsored by liquor giant Diageo, New Orleans’ Contemporary Arts Center.

Brands found clever ways to promote themselves, crafting whimsical and interactive tasting rooms, throwing happy hours, offering special product unveilings or cocktail-paired dinners – or, in the case of Amaro Montenegro, the excellent Italian bitter liqueur, having its master botanist demonstrate its 132-year-old production process using herbs and spices, an alembic, a boiler and a macerating device.

Jagermeister, the ubiquitous digestif now angling for a piece of the craft-cocktail craze, recruited Gaz Regan, author of The Joy of Mixology, for a happy hour at Fritzel’s, the Bourbon Street jazz pub where LSU students made Jager popular in the late 1980s. And then threw a huge party afterward.  And there was Diageo, the giant spirits company behind brands like Tanqueray and Don Julio, scoring Snoop Dogg for its own beats-heavy Friday night bash.

Amaro Montenegro
Master botanist Matteo Bonoli prepares to illustrate Amaro Montenegro’s production process using an alembic, boiler and macerating device.

Workshops this year included explorations of ingredients like grains and bitter gentian in spirits and liqueurs; the use of technology such as centrifuges behind the bar; and the rising popularity of umami flavor and low-proof drinks.

Cocktails were plentiful, served mostly in small plastic Tales cups, and it was wise to heed the oft-quoted Tales adage “you don’t have to finish that” while collecting grab-and-go bottled water along the way. That said, I did find the bottom of a few superior creations –my favorites being Laura Bellucci’s House of the Rind, a dessert-like mix of Earl-Grey-infused honeysuckle vodka, lemon curd and citrus-chamomile bitters served at Sunday’s “Legs and Eggs” burlesque brunch at SoBou; and from Aaron Polsky of Los Angeles’ Harvard and Stone, the Precious Punch served at Thursday’s pisco tasting room, featuring pisco acholado, apricot liqueur and amaro.

Fritzel's, New Orleans
Drawn by rumors of its Valium-like effects, LSU students in the late 80s came to Fritzel’s to drink Jaegermeister, making this Bourbon Street jazz joint the launchpad for its eventual widespread popularity.

Camaraderie is what keeps people coming back to Tales, and festival vets saw old friends while newbies made new ones. Second-timer Ashley Williams, a Bols Genever ambassador who tends bar at Filament in Dallas, was looking forward to being in New Orleans and meeting fellow ambassadors. What had she learned from her first go-round?

“Pace yourself,” she said. “You don’t have to do everything. There’s so much going on. Take some time to just go sit in a park.”

Tales of the Cocktail
Black Swan’s Hartai brandishes the Texas flag at the U.S. Bartenders’ Guild’s annual midnight toast.

Being in the French Quarter, amid the stilt-walkers and human statues and little kids drumming on plastic buckets, it was also worth revisiting gems like the rotating Carousel Bar, grabbing a frozen Irish Coffee at classic haunt Erin Rose or nestling in at the French 75 Bar at historic restaurant Arnaud’s, which recently won the James Beard award for bar program of the year.

Around the festival’s midway point came the U.S. Bartenders’ Guild’s beloved annual Thursday midnight toast, on which Texas naturally has put its stamp over the years with waving Lone Star flags and choruses of “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” This year’s spectacle was a bit more subdued, given that the whole shebang had to be relocated from construction-torn Bourbon Street to the second-floor confines of Bourbon Cowboy Too. Nevertheless, Texas endured – and somehow so did Tales, which will power on to see another year.

Tales of the Cocktail
When the party’s over: The aftermath of Villa Campari’s Aperol Spritz rooftop happy hour.

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The renaissance was going to reach Dallas eventually: The craft-cocktail tsunami washing inland from the coasts was too powerful for a city this big to ignore.

Dallas can be maddeningly set in its ways, but sooner or later someone was going to blaze the trail, and two years later, Mike Martensen and Brian Williams are still standing. And not just standing, but aiming to take the city’s rapidly maturing cocktail culture to a new level.

This month, The Cedars Social – their first joint project – quietly marked its two-year anniversary. If you’re looking for the place that truly stirred Dallas from its Crown Royal doldrums, this would be it.

This isn’t to ignore the bartenders who’d already been making a humble practice of honoring classic drinks and squeezing fresh juices, or the handful of restaurants and high-end hotels that had started toying with craft cocktails to mark the growing trend. But The Cedars Social was the first to say: This is what we do. This is who we are.

Someday — and hopefully someday soon — Martensen and Williams will open phase one of The Establishment, their ambitious trident of a cocktail-centered operation in Knox-Henderson. For some, the pair’s painstaking, indefinite efforts to ready the place for presentation resemble not so much a bar opening as the how-much-longer-are-you-going-to-be-in-the-bathroom machinations of a teen princess primping for the prom.

It’s hard, though, to fault their perfectionism. February 2011 was not so long ago, and yet, back then, The Cedars Social’s opening was a splash of watercolor on gray canvas. Despite a succession of quality chefs in the kitchen, it’s still as it ever was: A breath of fresh air not just for a less-traveled neighborhood seeking life but for a city poised to move to a new level. With its classy wood-and-brick library feel, simple stylishness and a savvy locale drawing a refreshingly diverse regular clientele, The Cedars Social wasn’t just another bar: It’s in every sense a cocktail lounge – smart and innovatively drink-centered, committed to fresh ingredients, focused on casual community and the cocktail as experience.

‘There’s something about the way they’ve set it up – from the cocktails to the food to the music they play – that totally disarms people and makes them feel like they belong there,” says Dallas Morning News reporter Gromer Jeffers, a Cedars Social regular.

Meanwhile, look what we’ve gotten since: In Uptown, Private/Social, Tate’s and Standard Pour; in Plano, Whiskey Cake; The People’s Last Stand at Mockingbird Station; The Usual in Fort Worth; Bowl and Barrel near Northpark; Sunset Lounge downtown. Meanwhile, longtime craft masters like Charlie Papaceno of Windmill Lounge, Libertine’s Mate Hartai, Black Swan’s Gabe Sanchez, Bolsa’s Kyle Hilla, Oak’s Abe Bedell and Grant Parker at Hibiscus continue to work cocktail magic in less obvious settings.

“As soon as they opened, that blew it open for everyone,” says bartender Chris Dempsey of The People’s Last Stand.  “People really look to them in homage.”

Here’s what I want when I walk into a cocktail joint. I want a seat at the bar. I want to know my bartender. I want a quality cocktail with ingredients as fresh as possible. I want a constantly refilled glass of water. I want decent food. I want a bartender adept with the gab, well versed in the classics and able to riff. I want someone willing to make what I want but equally skillful at getting me to try something new. I want a drink menu of variety and daring, low on gimmickry, easy to read. I want a crowd there to socialize, not to party. I want a place where I’m just as comfortable meeting friends or making new ones as I am doing a crossword. And I want the bartender to remember me the next time I walk in.

The Cedars Social has been doing this for me from Day One. Granted, being just south of downtown it’s close to my usual place of business, but I consider that cool karma for a boy who had to be dragged kicking and screaming from cocktail-culture-rich Seattle.

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Williams, a former Green Bay Packer, had been looking to open his own bar for a while. Places like Death & Co. in New York City, the Violet Room in Chicago and Bryant’s Cocktail Lounge in Milwaukee helped shape his vision.

Then he met Martensen, a palate-blessed upstart from Casper, Wyo., who’d been a spirits ambassador for Diageo and barman at The Mansion at Turtle Creek. Both shared a similar passion for the craft and the idea of a place that would be a quality cocktail bar first with great food rather than an upscale restaurant with great drinks.

“It’s definitely a cocktail place first,” Williams says, taking a minute to ask a new bartender to double-strain an herb-heavy drink before presenting it to a patron. “For me it was always about quality, the art of the craft.”

Take away the food, and you’ve still got The Cedars Social. But take away the craft cocktails, and The Cedars Social is gone. Social is the key word. I can’t tell you how many ongoing acquaintances and friendships have been sparked at the bar.

One mark of its greatness is that it doesn’t matter who’s wielding the shaker: You’re going to get a great drink from someone who respects balance, flavor, history and service, who can just as soon whip up something original as throw down any of a long list of classic cocktails in the bar menu along with a seasonal array of originals, a smattering of Prohibition-Era gems and a handful of “tributes” – notable cocktails from other bartenders around the country whose inclusion here reflects the bar’s anti-cookie-cutter ethos of artistry and originality. (My favorite of these has been the Number Four, a mix of gin, honey syrup, cardamom and cracked pepper designed by Tanqueray global rep Angus Winchester.)

The bottles huddled behind the bar are wide-ranging and forward-thinking. Whiskey in particular is well represented. You can still order a vodka and soda. But why would you?

“We may be running on the beach right now, but we’re still moving forward,” Martensen told me during The Cedars Social’s first year of operation. “Every day I get somebody who doesn’t drink gin to drink gin.”

The prevalence of craft cocktails around town shows how adventurous the city’s palates have become in the meantime. The Cedars Social’s latest menu re-do features a pair of drinks built around vermouth, another sign of the bar’s vanguard thinking. Not in the mood? Order one of the city’s best Sazeracs instead. And while you’re at it, congratulate The Cedars Social on two years of cocktail pioneering. Dallas is much the better for it.

— Marc Ramirez, 2/14/13

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