Who’s Your Daddy? A Mai Tai Paternity Test
The Mai Tai, though a later addition to the tiki pantheon than the famous Zombie, is undisputedly the most well-known tiki drink today. We’ve all tasted one–with varying degrees of success–be they made on Long Island or Oahu. But besides being popular, the Mai Tai is also one of the most hotly contested drinks in [...]
America’s New Distilleries
There are, as panelist Matthew Rowley pointed out, more American craft distilleries operating right now than at any time since Prohibition. Some estimates claim there is a new distillery every three days, concentrated largely on the coasts, with a particular concentration inland in Colorado.
Those lucky people who attended Friday’s seminar about craft distillers were treated [...]
The Spirits of Spirited Dinner: Rio Mar
When you know you’re about to enjoy a dinner cooked by chefs Adolfo Garcia and Frank Stitt, what could be more apropos than a flight of aged Panamanian and Puerto Rican rums–unless it’s four cocktails made with those rums?
When those cocktails are made by rum aficionados/nerds/madmen Martin Cate (Smuggler’s Cove, San Francisco) and Wayne Curtis [...]
A Tasting for the Adventurous Palette (In Pictures)
The view from the Evangeline Rooms at the Royal Sonesta during Thursday’s afternoon tasting:
Ed Hamilton and Jeff “Beachbum” Berry
The alternate Ed Hamilton pouring rum
Matt Lirette pouring mezcal
Eric Seed pouring aperitvos
Beyond Punch: Colonial American Drinks
There are cocktail people all over the place at Tales–enthusiasts, bartenders, brand reps, bloggers–and you can’t turn anywhere but you run into a cocktail conversation in progress. As such, a 10am seminar seems, besides being pretty early in NOLA time, very much like a continuation of last night’s discussions.
Until you walk in on Wayne Curtis [...]
Pro Series Seminar: In-House Soda Program
Tales kicked off with a day of seminars focused on the needs of beverage professionals, covering such topics as intellectual property, sugar, ice, menus and soda programs. Yes, that soda–the kind you remember at those fountains the kids in “Leave It to Beaver” visited after school.
Led by Darcy O’Neil, author of “Fix the Pumps,” [...]
Spirited Dinner: The Magic of Sidney Frank at Iris
Cocktails from the Sidney Frank portfolio with dinner by chef Ian Schnoebelen
My last trip to New Orleans was in 2009, and that week passed in a blurry whirl of amazing meals and awesome drinks. Hard to believe that you could spend an entire week eating pretty much nonstop, but that’s what I did. One of [...]
A History of Cocktail Glassware
A Pre-Tales Q&A with presenter Angus Winchester
Angus Winchester is something of a Tales institution. A founding member of one of the first global bar consulting agencies, Angus is a bartender and Global Ambassador for Tanqueray. His comments on the spirits industry have been in The New York Times, The London Independent, and Toronto Star, and [...]
Hotel Monteleone: 125 Years of History
A Pre-Tales Q&A with panel moderator Philip Greene
One of the star attractions at Tales of the Cocktail every year isn’t a TV personality or even a bartender, but the city of New Orleans itself. Participants (myself included) are continually charmed, awed, dazzled and wooed by the Big Easy. I could fill this page with florid, [...]
Drinking on Deadline
A Pre-Tales Q&A with panel moderator Paul Clarke
Print, despite much trumpeting to the contrary, isn’t dead yet. That is especially true in the area of food and cocktails, where there has been an explosion of interest in recent years, particularly in online writing for newspapers, magazines and blogs. Paul Clarke, spirits journalist and blogging maestro [...]
