Tag Archives: New Orleans

Barmoire, Tales of the Cocktail, Texas

And so it begins: Tales of the Cocktail 2014 kicks off in New Orleans

Tales of the Cocktail 2013
Dallas’ Mate Hartai, second from left, and Brian McCullough, second from right, doin’ Texas proud at the Texas Tailgate Party that kicked off Tales of the Cocktail 2013.

NEW ORLEANS — It’s that time again – time to let the good times roll, time to learn about agricole, time to sip some Aperol. You know what I mean: It’s time for Tales of the Cocktail 2014.

The nation’s most ginormous industry event for bartenders, bar owners, spirits makers, liquor reps, enthusiasts and the wretched chroniclers of said shenanigans is upon us for its 12th year in that most perfect of cities, New Orleans.

Oh, New Orleans: You complete me. You are the primordial jambalaya from whose loins sprang the mighty Sazerac, the sultry Vieux Carre’, the demanding Ramos Gin Fizz, the insufferable Hurricane.

We know her as NOLA, and she is among America’s craft-cocktail matrons, with heralded institutions like Arnaud’s French 75, Antoine’s Hermes Bar and the Court of Two Sisters evidencing craft culture before its modern renaissance; it’s not for nothing that the Museum of the American Cocktail is based here. That’s not to say there aren’t some great new cocktail bars in NOLA: Cure, Bellocq and Cane and Table have earned much national acclaim.

I’ll hope to visit them if I can find the time. That’s because this five-day festival can be grueling, chock full as it is with workshops, happy hours, competitions, spirit-paired dinners, tastings, Bloody-Mary breakfast stations, new product unveilings, cocktail tours, chance wee-hour reunions, huge parties and… even huger parties. A smorgasbord of delights, for sure; but also a test of one’s resolve; there are opportunities to be missed if you aren’t careful – including “whiskey dialogues,” seminars about how to launch a spirits line or about the Chinese spirit baijiu, tips for bartenders charged with making drinks in front of TV cameras and advanced bartender trainings.

Tales of the Cocktail 2013
The William Grant & Sons party at last year’s Tales conference, complete with the Hendrick’s Gin cannon at right.

This is my third year at Tales and I’ll be bringing you dispatches from the front lines where members of Texas’ bartending community are representing the Lone Star State, many for the first time – including Alex Fletcher of Victor Tango’s, Barter’s Stephen Halpin, The Standard Pour’s Christian Armando, Absolut Vodka rep Ashley Williams (formerly behind the bar at Boulevardier) and Sissy’s Southern Kitchen’s Chase Streitz, whose victory in a recent Jefferson Bourbon competition earned him the trip here (I was among the contest’s judges). Most of the action will be going down at the veritable Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street, home to the revolving Carousel Bar.

The festival kicks off with Wednesday morning’s Texas Tiki Throwdown, because obviously nobody knows how to throw a party like Texas, and the ensuing days will feature other Texas bar peeps along the way: Former Dallas luminary Jason Kosmas will wax proud about his popular new line of spirits; Bonnie Wilson – here with her flock of Fork It Over Restaurants staffers – will churn out cocktails for an Anchor Distilling Co. shindig; Austin’s Chris Bostick will compete at Wednesday’s Battle of the Sexes bartender competition. Also, because this is New Orleans, there will be beignets.

I asked a few TOTC veterans to offer tips for festival first-timers and for their can’t-miss destinations while in New Orleans.

BRIAN McCULLOUGH, The Standard Pour – 6th time at Tales

The Standard Pour
Brian McCullough of The Standard Pour in Uptown.

SURVIVAL TIPS: One, eat when you see food. Two, drink when you see water. Three, sleep when you can. And four, you don’t have to finish that.

MUST-DO’S: You’ll do yourself a disservice if you don’t go to Frenchman Street.  Café Le Monde, for sure. Port of Call for a cheeseburger. And the alligator cheesecake at Jackamo’s – the tables are all uneven, but the food is absolutely astounding.

BONNIE WILSON, Fork It Over Restaurants (Whiskey Cake, Mexican Sugar, et al.) — 4th time at Tales

Bonnie Wilson, beverage director for Fork It Over Restaurants. (Photo courtesy of Fork It Over.)
Bonnie Wilson, beverage director for Fork It Over Restaurants. (Photo courtesy of Fork It Over.)

SURVIVAL TIPS: Everything in moderation. You can go down and have things be crazy, or you can go down and have it be a fun educational event. Be moderate about it. Do everything you want to do, but just control yourself.

MUST-DO’S: I always go to Mother’s for the Ferdy’s special. That’s 100 percent a must. They do this stuff called debris. It’s a ham and roast beef sandwich with basically the juices, the pan drippings, all the goodness, spices and fat and everything.

MATE HARTAI, The Cold Standard – 3rd time at Tales

Libertine Bar
Dallas’ Mate Hartai. (Photo by Jason Raney)

SURVIVAL TIPS: Lots of (dehydration preventative) Pedialyte. And cardio.

MUST-DO’S: Get out of the French Quarter. Check out the architecture. I’m from Hungary, and this place reminds me of Europe. I’ve been to New York and San Francisco, all the supposed European cities, and this city makes me more homesick to be in than anywhere else.

BRAD BOWDEN, Barter – 3rd time at Tales

Barter
Brad Bowden, lately of Uptown’s Barter.

SURVIVAL TIP: Nothing good happens after 5 AM.

MUST-DO’S: Mad Hatter. I always try to stop in and get myself a hat. And the Erin Rose – I always go there and get one of those Bailey’s drinks they have there. (Erin Rose is renowned for their frozen Irish Coffee.)

Victor Tango's
High West’s Chris Furtado and Remy Cointreau’s Emily Perkins showing off their skin art at Dallas’ Victor Tango’s.

EMILY PERKINS, Remy Cointreau brand rep, Dallas – 2nd time at Tales

SURVIVAL TIPS: Just let it wash over you. But be responsible. And be careful; it’s easy to forget that New Orleans can be a dangerous place.

MUST-DO’S: Domelise’s, for the po-boy sandwich.

CHRIS FURTADO, Texas rep for Utah’s High West Distillery

SURVIVAL TIPS:

* Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.

• Take time to eat. Often.  When dashing from seminar to event to party, sometimes meals fall to the side.  You are doing yourself a disservice both physically and culturally.

• Don’t book yourself solid; leave some time free.  A lot of cool stuff will come up that you didn’t know about.

• Be ready for rain. It’s New Orleans, it’s the summer.  It’s not a question of if but when.

MUST-DO’S:

* The U.S. Bartenders Guild toast at The Old Absinthe House – Thursday at midnight.  There’s something cool about seeing the street packed with bartenders raising their glasses in the air and yelling cheers.

* Have a Lucky Dog. Get a slice of pizza also.  Skip the Hand Grenade (drink) though.

* The Alibi is a great late-night spot.  It’s where local service industry peeps go to unwind.

 

Competitions and Honors, Events, Tales of the Cocktail

Tales of the Cocktail 2013: It’s not just gin cannons. But whoa: Gin cannons!

At the William Grant and Sons party, Tales of the Cocktail 2013
Yup, that’s a gin cannon.

As the 11th annual Tales of the Cocktail conference winds to a close, we’ve learned about airport bars and the Prohibition-Era invasion of Cuba by American bartenders, slogged our way through cocktail competitions and witnessed elaborate fetes featuring fancy hats, gin cannons and a band suspended in midair.

Dallas bartenders have done us proud, too: Bar Smyth’s Omar Yeefoon took the title of “Stoli’s Most Original Bartender” at the UrbanDaddy-sponsored cocktail contest of the same name, throwing down an unlikely combo of Stoli Salted Karamel vodka, sweet vermouth, Angostura bitters and Prosecco. “I was thinking, this would never make a good cocktail,” Yeefoon said. But apparently it did, giving him the edge over four other bartenders from around the country.

William Grant and Sons party, TOTC 2013
The Wednesday night scene inside New Orleans’ newly revamped Civic Theater.

Bonnie Wilson of The Ranch at Las Colinas represented DFW at Anchor Distilling’s 21-Cocktail Salute competition, where drink-makers each had to fire up an original shot, punch and cocktail. Her tangy Fire and Brimstone shot featured Hirsch small-batch bourbon, lime, honey syrup and Cholula hot sauce; the winner of that contest won’t be known until well after the conference wraps up this weekend.

But hey. The Hendrick’s Gin cannon.  The sight was part of the annual packed-to-the-gills William Grant and Sons party, held this year at New Orleans’ beautifully revamped Civic Theatre. It had to be seen to be believed, and let’s just you had to get your kisser up close to avoid having your entire upper torso drenched in alcohol, unless you were looking to cool off, in which case you would have been faulted by no one.

Tales of the Cocktail 2013
Bonnie Wilson of The Ranch at Las Colinas dishes up drinks at the 21-Cocktail Salute competition.

 

Tales of the Cocktail, Texas

Tales Of The Cocktail 2013: The national conference is on

The great Dale DeGroff, at Tales of the Cocktail 2012
The great Dale DeGroff, at Tales of the Cocktail 2012

Here’s what you need to know about New Orleans. While it may not be at the forefront of the nation’s cocktail revival, it doesn’t need to be: The city has earned its spot in the cocktail pantheon and, as anyone who’s been to the French Quarter knows, drinking runs through its veins. The city is home to several classic drinks, including the mighty Sazerac, the venerable Ramos Gin Fizz and the luscious Vieux Carre.

In short, all you little cocktail whippersnapper scenes with your fancy infusions and dapper vests and shiny bar equipment can brag all you want to, but New Orleans is, along with New York and Chicago, one of the original cocktail gangstas that paved your way.  Cocktails ain’t nothin’ but a thang here. That’s not to say there aren’t some great new cocktail bars in NOLA: Cure and Bellocq have earned much national acclaim, and Barmoire plans to visit them both. But it’s places like Arnaud’s French 75, Antoine’s Hermes Bar and the Court of Two Sisters that reflect a craft cocktail culture before its modern rejuvenation and one reason The Museum of the American Cocktail is based here.

Last year's event featured samplings of Japanese Scotch
Last year’s event featured samplings of Japanese Scotch

And that’s why, for the 11th straight year, the Tales of the Cocktail conference – the nation’s largest such event, founded by Ann Tuennerman – is now underway in New Orleans again, and Barmoire is along to bring you the action live. OK, well, not live, and maybe not even immediately, but eventually and eagerly. Over the next few days, the French Quarter will be crawling with bartenders and spirit reps and cocktail enthusiasts from all over the country – all here to drink up a lineup of informational seminars, classes, excursions, tasting rooms, dinners and, of course, parties designed to promote America’s thriving cocktail culture.

The Texas contingent is huge this year and well represented in the festivities, from bartender competitions to today’s tailgate event outside the flagship Hotel Monteleone and, as Barmoire noted earlier, Friday’s epic Bare Knuckle Bar Fight national bar vs. bar vs. bar throwdown that will feature Dallas’ own Bar Smyth.

Esquire magazine's cocktail guru, David Wondrich, helped lead a session on Curacao
Esquire magazine’s cocktail guru, David Wondrich, helped lead a session on Curacao at last year’s event

Barmoire was here last year when Dallas made its first-ever conference splash with a festive tasting-room event, but there was so much more, including Japanese Scotch tastings, a Brugal Rum party bus, burlesque, and even a sighting of cocktail legend Dale DeGroff, the man who essentially launched the craft cocktail revival.

This year promises to be equally eventful, and you can track my perambulation throughout the week on Twitter at @typewriterninja.

And did we mention there was burlesque? At the posh William H. Grant party.
Did we mention there was burlesque? At last year’s posh William Grant & Sons party.
Barmoire

Tales of the Cocktail 2012: Bar Room Brawl

Somewhere in the onslaught, the judges were watching. From behind their battle stations, competitors issued flurries of their very best cocktails for the never-ending crush of people who’d filled New Orleans’ Generations Hall to capacity.

This was Bar Room Brawl 2012, the annual bartenders’ faceoff at the Tales of the Cocktail festival pitting six of the nation’s best bars against each other in a sort of cage-smackdown party.

The gloves were off as six of America’s best bars squared off in New Orleans.

Boston’s Eastern Standard and LA’s Roger Room took the two top prizes last year, but now a new set of bars were vying for judges’ and people’s choice hardware — Houston’s Anvil, Kansas City’s Manifesto, New York City’s Employees Only, San Francisco’s Beretta, Seattle’s Rob Roy and The Passenger of Washington, D.C.

It was like taking a tour of America’s best bars, and as loud and messy as you might expect. The historic hall, a onetime sugar refinery dating back to the 1820s, had been transformed into one of the 10th annual festival’s most raucous events, and inside, bartenders muddled, shook, stirred and poured as fast as their bartender wizardry would allow.

DC’s The Passenger produced one of my favorite drinks of the night — Olson’s Revenge, featuring Grand Marnier, mezcal, honey and habanero bitters.

Each bar slung drinks featuring one of four sponsor spirits: Grand Marnier, Belvedere Vodka, 10 Cane Rum and Hennessey Cognac. Earlier, they’d made those same drinks for judges who now watched to see how well the six bar crews would hold up in the pressure-filled atmosphere.

A sampling of NYC’s Employees Only’s atmospheric decor.

There was Houston’s Anvil with its Antilles Julep – Grand Marnier, Jamaican rum, turbinado sugar, Angostura bitters and mint – and Kansas City’s Manifesto with a drink called Winter In The West Indies, a mix of 10 Cane rum, roasted butternut squash puree, honey-cinnamon syrup, lemon and Angostura aromatic bitters.

I had to restrain myself when I saw that New York City’s Employees Only – co-owned by Dallas’ Jason Kosmas, of Marquee Grill & Bar – was throwing down with its Ginger Smash, whose gingery aggressiveness I’d fallen in love with on a trip to New York last year. With Kosmas working the bar with his former homies, it remained my favorite drink of the night, followed by Passenger’s habanero-spiced Olson’s Revenge.

DC’s The Passenger employed napkins for a little trash-talking.

Bars had been urged to recreate some hint of their actual vibe, and Employees Only’s bar top was bookended by tatted babes in burlesque get-up, who lounged indifferently above the fray like New York City Public Library lions. Washington’s Passenger, meanwhile, handed out napkins wielding smack-talk: “Houston, You Have A Problem.” “New York City Smells Like Pee.” “Nice Mustache, San Francisco.” “Seattle: Oh Right, Like the 90’s.”

At left, Anu Apte of Seattle’s Rob Roy awaits announcement of the final results.

A band played onstage, and as Saturday turned into Sunday, the voracious throngs feasted on pretzels, wraps and maple-sausage breakfast sandwiches while tables overflowed with the debris of imbibement. By night’s end, Employees Only had been named the judges’ favorite, as if Dallas needed one more reminder that the city is lucky to have a guy like Kosmas around.

Dallas’ Kosmas, who worked the night alongside his former crewmates at Employees Only, the New York bar he co-owns, celebrates the victory.

The People’s Choice award went to Beretta of San Francisco, whose staff and fans rejoiced around the bar and beyond and – well, honestly, on a night like this, it was hard to tell where the celebrating ended and the partying began.

The bartenders of San Francisco’s Beretta celebrate their People’s Choice award.

Finally showing a little emotion after Employees Only takes the big prize.

— Marc Ramirez

Published 7-30-12

Barmoire

D and Easy: Tales of the Cocktail opens with Dallas on menu

Lucky Campbell of The Chesterfield says hello to New Orleans.

Tales of the Cocktail, the premier party event for the nation’s bartenders, cocktail chroniclers and spirit and liqueur reps, is officially underway in the Big Easy, with one big D of difference:

For the first time, Dallas bartenders have a special seat at the table, with a tasting event called “Come and Get It! Cocktails Texas Style!”

I’m not sure what the purpose of that second exclamation point is, but suffice it to say that the sampling of local luminaries – including Jason Kosmas of Marquee Grill & Bar, Rocco Milano of Private/Social and Michael Martensen of Cedars Social – on hand to show what makes the Lone Star State so dadgum special are awfully excited.

Bartending tool seller Cocktail Kingdom represents with shakers, jiggers and coupes.

I’ll be posting dispatches from that event and some of the 10th annual festival’s other cocktail workshops, tastings, contests, industry showdogging and requisite revelry along the way.  Most of the action will be going down at the veritable Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street, home to the revolving Carousel Bar and birthplace of the Vieux Carre cocktail.

The Vieux Carre is one of several classic cocktails with roots in New Orleans, which makes this festive city an appropriate home for the yearly event founded by Ann Tuennerman and just one more reason to shower it with love.

Tales of the Cocktail has taken over New Orleans’ Hotel Monteleone. In the background, event founder and executive director Ann Tuennerman talks with a conference attendee.

This is my first year at the festival, and I’m already wowed by the offerings: tributes to rum, apertifs and cucaçao; workshops on Russian drinking culture, foraged ingredients, bartending ecology and even the health benefits of alcohol spiked with beneficial herbs. Some of us will see how bartenders have been portrayed in popular culture, make our own vermouths and bitters or experience the whisky bars of Japan.

These are marathon days, launching with Bloody Marys and oysters on the half-shell when most other people are barely pawing at bagels and drearily sipping morning coffee. Making it through the race requires a shrewd sense of pacing, indomitable endurance and a mighty constitution.

Let’s do this.

Absolut Breakfast.

– Marc Ramirez

Published 7-25-12