Jeffrey Morgenthaler

As many of you might know, this week is the annual cocktail geek gathering in New Orleans known as Tales of the Cocktail. Every year, bartenders, brand ambassadors, and cocktail enthusiasts from all over the world come together to celebrate, learn about, and embrace the cocktail renaissance.

Coincidentally, Tales falls almost five months to the day after International Bear Rendezvous in San Francisco. Every year bears, cubs, and daddies from all over the world come together to celebrate, learn about, and embrace the bear culture.

And while the two festivals may have different purposes, they do share a common theme: liberal cities full of large, bearded men getting together and sweating profusely while consuming lots of alcohol. So in the the spirit of celebrating our collective alternative lifestyles, I present to you this photo quiz: let’s see if you can tell the two events apart.

1. Start with an easy one. Cocktail geek, or “bear”?

Big guy, full beard, collared shirt, lanyard. That’s classic cocktail geek getup right there, folks, in the form of top cocktail geek Rick Stutz, AKA Kaiser Penguin.

2. Okay, this one’s a little tougher. Cocktail geek, or “bear”?

Big guy, full beard, no shirt, no lanyard. You’ve got yourself a bear in the wild right here.

3. Answer this one quickly: cocktail geek, or “bear”?

Smaller guy, full beard, no shirt, but standing in front of the Hotel Monteleone at four in the morning? Unfortunately for some, public nudity is a very real part of both events. And while your initial response might have been “bear”, this is actually cocktail geek and Chicago bartender Brad Bolt.

We would have also accepted “cub”.

4. Okay, let’s go. Cocktail geeks, or “bears”?

Two men: one bearded, one goateed. Both are wearing polo shirts, and both are understandably drinking beer from plastic cups. Ready? Bears.

I warned you, this isn’t always easy.

5. Now try this. Cocktail geeks, or “bears”?

Again, two men, one bearded, one goateed. Both are wearing Hawaiian shirts and inexplicably drinking Velvet Falernum from the bottle.

Cocktail geeks. Always. These bears are actually a special subset of cocktail geeks known as tiki nerds. The nerds in this instance are Matt “RumDood” Robold and Craig “Dr. Bamboo” Mrusek. Only a tiki nerd would drink Velvet Falernum straight from the bottle.

6. An important part of bear culture is the notion of “cubs”; younger men who identify with the culture and often accompany older men. Here are four pictures of younger men accompanying older men. See if you can pick out the one couple of cocktail geeks from the group.

Photos C and D are of bears and cubs.
Photo A is Seattle cocktail and spirits writer Paul Clarke, and San Francisco bartender/brand ambassador Neyah White.
Photo B is an intentional trick: Star Trek: The Next Generation actors Jonathan Frakes (as Commander WIlliam Riker) and Wil Wheaton as (Lieutenant Wesley Crusher) are huge icons in the bear/cub community.

Sadly I can’t be there in New Orleans this year with all of my cocktail nerd brothers and sisters, as I came down with a wicked case of pneumonia earlier in the week. But if you’d like to follow along with all of their exploits, be sure to check out the Tales Blog for all of the juicy bits.

It’s six o’clock at night in New Orleans and I’m sweating, hard. Not because of the heat outside, but because I’m inside, on a stage with a microphone in my hand. Eight of the best bartenders in the country are lined up behind me, hundreds of people are seated in front of me, and everyone in the room is staring at me. And at this moment all I can think about is my near-debilitating case of stagefright and how much I hate speaking in public. So I pause for a second and think to myself:

How in the hell did I end up here?

To answer that, we have to go back a year, to the previous gathering of bartenders, cocktail aficionados, bon vivants and drunkards known as Tales of the Cocktail. One similarly steamy night in July of 2008, after a long night of trash-talking with friends Daniel Shoemaker and Erik Adkins, we decided it would be a fine idea to have an impromptu three-man cocktail contest using only the ingredients found in my swag bag. So we grabbed a few friends, headed up to the pool, spread out a mind-numbing array of airplane bottles, syrups, sauces, candies and even (seriously) candles and proceeded to see who could make the best cocktail using only those ingredients (read more and even watch a video of the contest here.)

Anyway. It was fun, and dumb, and none of us thought much of it ten minutes after we declared Daniel the winner. But word spread, and our little throwdown became a sort of celebrated thing underground. Even David Wondrich grabbed my by the arm on the last night and said, “Hey, Morgenthaler, if you do that swag bag thing again next year, I want in.”

So, fast-forward four or so months – when I’m really not thinking about that night – to a cocktail party… in New Jersey of all places. It was there that I bumped into Ann Tuennerman, founder of Tales of the Cocktail. Ann pulled me aside and propositioned me about making the Swag Bag Competition a real sanctioned event at Tales this year. “Sounds good”, I said, and we put together a conference call to hammer out the details.

It was during this conference call that I was introduced to the folks at Grand Marnier/Navan and we all chatted about the event. Now, I’m generally pretty clueless, but I must have sounded like a real rube when I exclaimed, “Wait, let me get this straight – you want that thing I did on the roof last year to be the official Grand Marnier cocktail contest?!”

“Yes, you idiot”, must have been what everyone in on the conference call was thinking, but thankfully nobody spoke out loud. But what they did tell me was that they wanted me to design and host the whole thing: I was now in charge of picking the contestants, judges, setting the rules, choosing the items for the swag bags, and get up in front of the crowd and emcee the event – everything.

Well, shit. Fortunately I remembered that David Wondrich had wanted in, so I emailed him and asked him if he’d like to be a judge. But Dave wrote back and said, “I was actually hoping to compete.” Well, double-shit, now I’ve got James Beard award-winning author David Wondrich competing, and this is becoming, like, a real thing.

But if there’s one thing I’ve got going for me, it’s the fact that I’ve got a lot of good friends in this business. So I called up seven of them from cities around the country and asked them if they’d like to compete in my humble little Grand Marnier sponsored event. And you know what I love about my friends? Every one of them said, “Yes”.

And so there I was, on stage in front of Ricky Gomez, Paul Clarke, Misty Kalkofen, Neyah White, Todd Thrasher, David Wondrich, Giuseppe Gonzalez and Eric Alperin (who even went one step further for me and shaved a mohawk just for the competition).

On my cue, the eight of them opened their swag boxes and began working on a cocktail with the following disparate list of ingredients: Glenmorangie Scotch, Chopin Vodka, Don Julio Blanco Tequila, Hennessy VSOP Cognac, Tanqueray, Grand Marnier, Navan, Tabasco, Tea Forte Cocktail Infusions, Amarula Cream, Yellow Chartreuse, Alexia Chips, Freshies Bloody Mary Mix, Dirty Sue Olive Juice, Antigua & Barbuda Hot Sauce, Jalapeno, Chocolate, & Tropical Tanteo Tequilas, Kona Coffee Liqueur, Purista Natural Mojito Mix, Dum-Dum Lollipops and M&Ms

It was – in a word – insane. Wondrich immediately began building a little makeshift still out of a cocktail shaker and some aluminum foil and distilled Navan liqueur. I thought Misty was pouring a shot for me and herself, but she was actually about to infuse the tequila with Tea Forte tea infusions (we did the shot anyway). Thrasher was working on a reduction of Navan liqueur, and the whole thing went up in flames.

Alperin’s cheering section brought a boom box and was blasting music from inside the audience. The ladies of LUPEC Boston were standing on their seats and screaming for Misty. Our judges didn’t know what to think, I’m guessing it was the most unconventional cocktail competition they’d ever been involved in.

At one point I was asked to clear the stage of the people that had gotten up out of their chairs and were yelling at the contestants, but to no avail – the crowd had officially decided to bum-rush the show.

The whole thing lasted only an hour and a half, but it felt like it was over as soon as it began. The contestants presented their cocktails to the judges one-by-one and after much deliberation, they declared Giuseppe’s mixture of tea-infused Glenmorangie, Navan and Piña Colada mix to be the winner.

Special thanks to Brian Huff and David Shenaut for the use of the photos. Hopefully we’ll be returning next year with more.

(Gosh, they look happy.)

Anyway – it’s July, which means that it’s that time of year, to take a week-long reprieve from the steamy swelter of Oregon and head once again to the cool lazy breezes of New Orleans. Tales of the Cocktail is a week of cocktail seminars, workshops, classes, competitions, food, fun, friends, and – for some – nearly lethal amounts of alcohol that flows freely through the streets like so much urine in the morning sun.

I’ll be there, working, playing, talking, laughing, and – if Keith Waldbauer has anything to say about it – drinking while I provide blow-by-blow updates via my Twitter account.

So join me, and I hope to see you next week at Tales.

I’ve put together a transcript of my presentation at the BCB as well as all of the slides I used, especially for those of you whose first language is not English. I had a great time presenting and sincerely hope I can do it again next year!

Click here to continue reading »

Since I was deep in the thick of competition and couldn’t take notes, I enlisted the services of Portland, Oregon food writer Ms. Lizzy Caston. Following is her report.

What does a group of creative bartenders do with bags full of promotional alcohol samples, mixers and condiments? Hold a contest to determine who can make the best drink using nothing but the swag handed out at Tales of the Cocktail.

Welcome to Swag Off ’08.

In true rogue spirit, Jeffrey Morgenthaler, Daniel Shoemaker from the Teardrop Lounge in Portland, Oregon and Eric Adkins from the Slanted Door in San Francisco met Friday night on the roof the Monteleone Hotel by moonlight, in what is sure to become a legendary annual event.

The rules were simple. Gather together a group of three judges; in this case Keith Waldbauer, bartender at Union in Seattle and author of Moving at the Speed of Life, Lauren Clark from Drink Boston and Misty from LUPEC http://lupecboston.blogspot.com/. The lovely and vivacious Liquid Muse, Natalie Bovis-Nelson agreed to MC.

Ingredients included a hodge-podge of liquors not limited to airplane sized bottles of Bluecoat Dry Gin, G’Vine French Grape Gin, Pearl Vodka, St. Germain Elderflower liqueur, Veev Acai Spirit, Poli Grappa and the most prominent swag at Tales this year: Canton French Ginger Liquor.

Yikes.

In lesser hands these drinks could have been small disasters, yet each contestant showed skill, inventiveness and their own personal touches. Jeff’s strategy was to, “take one of everything on the table and mix it together” in a technique reminiscent of a savant teenage mixologist at a house party. Eric on the other hand, took the molecular cocktail approach by smoking an inverted drinking glass over a Navan liqueur vanilla-scented aromatherapy candle. Daniel simply grabbed a few different ingredients and like a mad scientist on speed mixed and tasted and mixed some more.

All drinks were served up, and Eric’s had a whopping 2 oz of gin, a full oz of Veev, an undisclosed amount of grappa and the above mentioned “smoke of the vanilla candle”. Daniel chose chili powder, 7 whole dashes of Angostura bitters, agave nectar, 1.5 oz gin, ¾ oz grappa and ½ oz of Campari for his “Seat of the Pants” cocktail. Jeff could not resist muddling the Sour Green Apple Cocktail Candy http://www.cocktailcandy.com/ccandy/ccandy.html for his “Green Mile”, adding it along with 4 dashes of Campari, dashes of Angostura, with some of the gin, St. Germaine, Bitter Lemon and a float of Lemoncello.

While the judges reactions were mixed, no one “spat” which is surely a good sign. Feedback was generally positive with all judges agreeing that each certainly had the Spirit of the Cocktail in them. Yet a clear winner did emerge; Daniel Shoemaker’s Seat of the Pants. Look for it at a Bennigan’s or TGIF Fridays soon.

So congratulations Daniel. And remember, we are all winners at Tales of the Cocktail.

Thanks, Lizzie! Be sure to watch the video coverage of the event at the Small Screen Network.

If you’ve noticed a dearth of posts from me while I’m at Tales of the Cocktail, please join me at the collaborative cocktail blog, TalesBlog.com

I’m attempting to liveblog some of the events I’m attending, and my colleagues are doing the same. I will, of course, be posting lots of photos and sharing some of the better stories once the trip is over.

I’m calling this “Day Zero” since the events don’t officially start until tomorrow. Although, you’d never know it by the sheer quantity of cocktail luminaries amassed in the French Quarter right now.

My day started with an internal miscommunication about the actual date of my departure (that’s what I get for booking the trip three months in advance and not checking my itinerary) – and this was after a full night behind the bar at Bel Ami.

After 10 hours of travel time, I was safely on my way to the hotel, sharing a cab with Chuck and Wes and longing for a lap or two around the Carousel Bar. And as much as I wanted to offend the room with my travel scent, I used my better judgement and cleaned up as well as I could before heading down to the bar.

There I spent some quality cocktail time with my old pals Natalie “The Liquid Muse” Bovis-Nelsen, Jenny Adams, and the Vieux Carré cocktail. It was an explosion of blogger-types as we rode the bar around the room in three complete cycles.

Then, the bloggers split off in search of jambalaya and gumbo at Coop’s (mmmm, rabbit, sausage, shrimp, oh my!). By this time I was feeling the effects of several cocktails, sleep deprivation and a full belly. Time for an iced coffee at Café du Monde! (Note to Café du Monde enthusiasts, they’ve got nothing on Pacific Northwest java. Seriously.)

The rag-tag group of enthusiasts then made its way down Bourbon Street (at Paul Clarke’s doing – thanks, Paul) to the French 75 bar next to Arnaud’s. We shared a round of 75s made with cognac and – I believe – orange liqueur (not my preferred recipe) and chatted with Jim Meehan.

I’d had my arm twisted into attending a tasting of La Fée Parisienne absinthe at the Old Absinthe House by Natalie (where were you?) and ran into some old friends from Las Vegas last year.

Anyway, it’s 11PM, I’ve been awake since I-don’t-know-when, and now I’m contemplating flipping a coin and braving the Carousel Bar once more before bed. This is going to be a good week.

To Tales of the Cocktail, that is. You see, after last year’s debacle there was no way I was going to miss this one. In fact, I was so excited about going that I somehow showed up to the airport a day early, embarrassed as heck and thanking the nice young lady up and down for rescheduling my flights. (If Beaumont were there he totally would have made fun of me until I peed my pants.)

Anyway, no harm done, as I’m currently at the Portland Airport waiting for my connection to Dallas, and then off to New Orleans. I’ll be posting updates via Twitter, here on my site, and most importantly on the ginormous collaborative cocktail blog that we’ve set up to provide more Tales coverage than you’ll be able to shake a swizzle stick at.

More to come soon, I’ve got to get ready for my flight!