Tag Archives: william grant and sons

Bartenders, Cocktail Nation, Events

Cheers! Documentary about the faces behind the craft-cocktail revival to screen Monday in Dallas

 

Documentary by Douglas Tirola
Raising the bar. (Image courtesy of 4th Row Films)

“The culture of drink endures because it offers so many rewards… above all the elusive promise of friendship and love.”

– Pete Hamill, from the documentary Hey Bartender

Yeah, think about that. You’re at your favorite bar, which is your favorite bar because they know what you like, or are clever enough to play to your tastes, or because they give you that little extra pour, or because they slyly started that conversation with you and that cute girl two seats away – but wait. Who’s they?

It’s bartenders, that’s who. And in this craft-cocktail renaissance that has demanded even higher levels of professionalism from those fine gents and damsels behind the counter, they are your tour guides.

Now comes a 2013 documentary that marks their role in the ongoing cocktail revival. Hey Bartender will screen at 7 p.m. Monday at the Highland Park Village Theater. Written and directed by Douglas Tirola, the film launched in New York City and Los Angeles earlier this year and follows the ups and downs of two bartenders: Steve Schneider, a retired U.S. Marine who hopes to tend bar at New York City speakeasy Employees Only; and Steve Carpentieri, owner of Dunville’s, a struggling pints-n-shots corner bar in small-town coastal Connecticut.

Employees Only, of course, is where Texas’ own Jason Kosmas earned his juice as one of the pioneering bar’s co-owners before he relocated to Dallas. (It’s also a bar Esquire’s David Wondrich calls “the greatest date bar in the world.”) Kosmas, who now co-owns The 86 Co. spirits venture, has since moved to Austin but had helped convince 4th Row Films to offer the screening here.

Hey Bartender documentary
Steve Schneider of New York’s pioneering speakeasy Employees Only is among those featured in the film. (Image courtesy of 4th Row Films)

The events in Hey Bartender take place about the time Kosmas came to Texas – one reason, he says, he’s not more prominently featured in the film. On the other hand, it gave him the chance to see Dallas cocktail culture go from tottering baby deer to the swaggering buck it is today. (And of course Kosmas had much to do with that, though he doesn’t say so.)

In that sense, getting 4th Row Films to screen the film here was a way to thank his local bartending and alcohol industry community for eschewing the standard vodka-and-Red-Bull approach to help to bring the scene to where it is now.

The film features contributions from Dale DeGroff, widely acknowledged as man behind the revival; Charlotte Voisey, representative for family-owned distillery William Grant and Sons, which has partnered with the film; and prominent New York bar owners and drink makers Jim Meehan, Audrey Saunders and Sasha Petraske.

The film features a black-and-white photo of a youthful, less hirsute Kosmas in his mid-20s, when he met fellow Employees Only co-owner Dushan Zaric. Both were tending bar at Pravda, Dale DeGroff’s first venture outside the famed Rainbow Room. “We were kids,” he says.

Tickets to the film are $11.95, but seats are very limited. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to call the theater beforehand to confirm availability. Or try buying tickets here. Kosmas, for one, will be returning to Dallas for the occasion.

“I’m really excited,” he says. “It’ll be great to come back home.”

Because sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.

HIGHLAND PARK VILLAGE THEATER, 32 Highland Park Village. 214-443-0222.

Cocktails are everywhere, Events, Fort Worth

Get your cocktail on at Fort Worth’s Modern Art Museum

Enhance your art appreciation with a cocktail like this. (Photo courtesy of the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art)
Enhance your art appreciation with a cocktail like this. (Photo courtesy of the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art)

Cocktails, cocktails. They’re everywhere. Heck, even P.F. Chang’s has a pretty decent drink menu now. You might have thought museums were the one place that cocktails had missed, but you’d be wrong, because on Thursday, Aug. 15, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is offering an evening of fancy drinks, tasty bites and live music at its own Café Modern.

A solid slate of area bartenders will be on hand to create works that go not under glass but in your glass – from Fort Worth, Brad Hensarling of The Usual; and from Dallas, Mate Hartai of Libertine Bar and Bar Smyth, Emily Perkins of Victor Tango’s and Ten Bells Tavern’s Greg Matthews.

Their palette will consist of products from William Grant and Sons, including Hendrick’s Gin, Art in the Age, Reyka Vodka and Monkey Shoulder Whiskey. If you’d rather get your tipples from a punch bowl, you can try one of two cocktail punches made with Milagro Tequila or Solerno blood orange liqueur.

The museum has offered wine-based events in the past, but this time around, says district manager Sharon Whieldon of William Grant and Sons, “they were looking for something a little more engaging and cocktail-driven for their members.”

So maybe it’s not such a stretch, you know: Some cocktails are quite artful, and many are even classics.

Admission is $60, not including tax or tip. The event runs from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Make a reservation by calling the café at 817-840-2157.

CAFE MODERN, 3200 DARNELL STREET, FORT WORTH.

 

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.