While I was in Sydney for the Bacardi Legacy global cocktail competition earlier this year, I checked out a bunch of the bars.
Here is a write-up I wrote for Departures.com of several of them more or less in the Downtown areas closest to the Opera House.
…and I didn't even make drinks.
I gave two full-length seminars and one mini-seminar at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans this year. For my seminar on Prehistoric Cocktail Technology, I went kinda big.
Here is my packing list, without multiples. 99 things, dayumn.
sugar
U-Fizz hoses
Plus I packed 200 baggies of dehydrated liqueur for my other seminar and some other stuff. Perhaps the greatest achievement was fitting it all into 3 suitcases.
Good times! Thanks to those who attended!
In my latest piece for Details.com I wrote about the history and current status of popcorn in drinks, be it fat-washed in or garnished atop.
It turns out that a million different places are doing it, and I mentioned about half of them and the various ways they're incorporating the movie food into the drinks.
Over the past year I've noticed the Gibson popping up on cocktail menus, so I decided to have a deeper look and write about it for Details.com.
Way back in 2010, I wrote a story for Mixology Magazine about Eggnog. The story was published in German (I wrote it in English and they translated) but this year they put the English version of the story online.
It covers what I could learn about eggnog at the time (keep in mind this is 4 years ago), including the history of the drink and its possible relation to British egg drinks like posset and wassail, along with other American drinks like Grog and the Tom & Jerry.
It also covers international egg drinks, including:
The story also includes a few eggnog recipes. Check it out here.
The fine folks at the Bay Area Newsgroup, which includes newspapers the San Jose Mercury, Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, and others, asked me to write a long profile of Trick Dog's Caitlin Laman, so that's what I did.
The story comes out in this Sunday's Eat Magazine, an insert into all those papers. I'm not sure if it's going online in traditional format, but here it is in Issu, the online magazine format. If it comes out as traditional text I'll share the link.
They did a nice job! Lots of photos and a lovely layout.
The article also includes illustrated recipes by 8 Bay Area bartenders:
They asked for ten but chose eight – sorry if yours was one of the ones left out.
Go read the story here!
Too early in the year for holiday gift guides? Perhaps!
Each year for Details.com I write a gift guide of spirits to consider for holiday gifting or just winter drinking. This year's list includes 11 spirits and 1 book, nearly all of which came out in the later half of the year (as Details is all about new stuff).
Spirits are mostly from well-known brands and include bottles from:
Check it out on Details.com here. Note: It's a slideshow so there is lots of clicking, sorry.
Last week I had the honor of being awarded the International Cognac Writer of the Year for 2014. The annual award is granted by the Bureau national interprofessionnel du Cognac, the BNIC. They are the industry promotion group for cognac.
Previous winners of the award include David Wondrich and Salvatore Calabrese, so I'm in excellent company.
I was given the award at the annual La Part des Anges charity auction held in Cognac, which this year raised over 237,600 euros for the Children in Crisis charity. The charity's patron Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, was there to host the event. (I sat at the next table over with her assistants.)
My friends Eric Fossard and Thierry Daniel were awarded the Cognac Personalities of the Year award for their running of the Boutique Bar Show in Paris.
In addition to the certificate to hang on the wall of my office, they gave me an engraved bottle to tempt me from storage.
That big feature I wrote on Sacramento's cocktail, coffee, and craft beer scene has gone up on the magazine's website.
Even if you're not a subscriber (and you really should be), you can read the story online here.
In a new story for Details.com I wrote about bartenders using salt in cocktails.
The first time I ever heard of such a thing (besides around the rim of a Margarita glass) was from Duggan McDonnell of Cantina. That was probably four years ago.
Now it seems that everybody is in on the secret and is using salt in their cocktails – whether they tell you about it or not.
Check out the story on Details.com about how and why and where bartenders are using salt in their drinks.