The Cocktail Seminars is a Top 4 Finalist for a Spirited Award!
I am delighted to announce that my latest book, The Cocktail Seminars, is a Top 4 Finalist for a Spirited Award at Tales of the Cocktail!
Tales of the Cocktail is the largest of the country’s annual cocktail conferences, and one I try to go to every year. It played a significant role in turning my early interest in cocktails into a career. I went in 2012, fresh out of college and fresh off my first, ad hoc cocktail instruction gig, the semester-long series of pre-graduation lessons in grown-up drinking I gave to half a dozen of my friends. Touching down in New Orleans - a city I had never visited before and have loved ever since - for a five-day drinking and drinking-education convention touched off an internal transformation, which took me from “wasn’t that a fun thing I did?” to “how do I get more of this into my life?”
Ten years later, I’m going back again, but this time as a nominee for a Spirited Award. The Spirited Awards are in many way the capstone event of Tales of the Cocktail, and have been described as 'the Oscars of bartending': the hospitality industry's way of recognizing its own on the largest stage available. The company I am keeping in the finalists’ circle is incredible, and very humbling. I’m up against Death and Co.’s third book, and two titles on Japanese bartending - one by a James Beard award winner, and another by a bartender who’s nominated for three other Spirited Awards this year. To say I’m ‘competing’ with them doesn’t feel quite right. Honestly, it’s an honor just to be listed in a group like that.
The playbill is here, if you want to see it for yourself: https://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&edid=d57b2d11-1f06-4968-9357-1d496d23d525
If you’ve been following the blog, thank you for your interest and investment in this quixotic project of mine over the years. The whole entire point of my hospitality career has been to bridge the gap between professionals and the public, to ensure that knowledge which is important to the cocktail tradition makes it into the hands of the home bartender and the broader drinking public. I hope that I’ve been able to do that for you, and I appreciate every opportunity you’ve given me to do so.