Leblon Tales ’09 Comp Recap
So yours truly was lucky enough to be one of the two finalists who got to represent the Arizona chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild in the leblon competition at tales of the cocktail this year. My cocktail was called “Espirito Brasilero” or spirit of brazil in portugese which is their native language also playing as a double entondre on cachaca being the spirit of brazil. I had half a lime quartered muddled with 2 dashes of angostura and rock candy syrup, then add pineapple juice and Leblon Cachaca and shake well. Strained into a cocktail glass garnished with a rim of sugar, cinnamon, and dried orange zest and a pineapple wedge.
The event was an exhilarating whirlwind that I will never forget. Starting off by getting lost on the way to the event, we were a little behind on our prep. We were told to prepare to make drinks for 400 people to try (what they expected to show up) which was quite an undertaking. They told us to prebatch about 200 cocktails so I zested about 120 oranges and dried them out in the sun and brought that along as well as squeezing over 200 lime halves. In retrospect I definitely should have brought a big juicer. Having thrown this drink together in a couple of hours due to the fact that I got the rules the afternoon of the day before the deadline I was very nervous about my drink not being up to par compared to everybody else especially since we were being judged as a team. I was even squeezing limes up until the people started asking for drinks so we didn’t have time to set up our western theme that we had delivered to new orleans.
Despite my worries and much to my surprise people really liked it. I was blown away when I was told by a lot of people that my drink was easily in the top three for the competition. There was a catagory for the crowd as well as a few judges coming around tasting everybodies drinks. They only announced first place which team Vegas got 1st for the judges (Andrew Pollard and Tobin Ellis) and Tad Carducci from New York got 1st from the crowd. So I’m going to claim 3rd (at least in my own mind, ha) unfortunately I was not able to get the judges scores to know where I really landed.
The music was great, the crowd was awesome and it was a blast as well as a great learning experience. They had a live band playing some wonderful music spanning some classic jazz to some latin music. The people coming through were having a great time and were very friendly which is always the ultimate for me. I love to see people enjoying themselves with friends, especially those they don’t get to see everyday. Thanks to all and I’ll see you next year!
