Insider has been hijacked for the weekend while the boys are at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans! We will back to business as usual on Monday… now, back to the French Quarter…
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Crume and I planned to go to different seminars so that we would have more to report back on from Tales.  We looked online at our options and realized with the amount of cool events to attend, the problem was definitely going to be choosing.  If I had my way Tales would run for a month so I could see them all.

The first day I had two seminars that I was pretty excited about.  The first was called From Convicts to Cocktailians: The Release of Australian Flavor.  This was moderated by Simon McGoram (Aus. Bartender Magazine), David Spanton (4bar.com.au), Matthew Bax (Tippling Club) and Jacob Briars (42BELOW). These gentlemen did a marvelous job of walking us through the history of drinking in Australia first, then New Zealand.  And of course, it is Tales, so after the history lesson we got a sippable sample of Cocktail Culture in the present times.

There were a myriad of things about their history that I didn’t know.  Like Australia’s first real currency was Rum. Gives a new meaning to “drinking the profits” right?  Also, there was a very strong temperance movement in the late 19th century, much like the one we had here in the US. Theirs did not end in prohibition like ours did, but in what was called the Six O’clock Swill.  See, women were granted the right to vote long before they were Stateside, and they used their newfound power to usher in this law. For years pubs and bars were forced to shut down at 6pm so that men would go home to their family.  This had the opposite effect than the one the women were hoping for.  Aussies and Kiwis would get out of work at 5pm, then dash to the pub and get as tanked as possible.  The resulting dinner table conversation must have been great.

This went on from 1916 to 1967, and when it was finally abolished there was a group that was instrumental in its downfall: The Australian Hotel Association.  Some may tout them as heroes, but others would argue that they ushered in another era of darkness.  As it happened, their lobby was so powerful that they ended the Six O’clock Swill but also remade the laws the way they saw fit. They essentially created a monopoly on the booze business that (long story short) resulted in lifeless industrial pubs all owned by one business, where one would only want to drink beer because there was no soul or care taken with cocktails. Australia had been completely isolated from the entire cocktail culture happening in the rest of the world. It wasn’t until 1987 when the laws were changed, and small, independently owned bars could legally open and explore a more passionate side of cocktail culture.  When this happened they didn’t walk, they ran. The rest is history.

At this point the boys walked us through some ingredients that Aussie and Kiwi use to make spirits that blew me away. We sampled 42 Below’s Manuka Honey Liqueur, A liqueur from Tambourine Mountain Distillers that came across like Campari and Maraschino Liqueur, and a rum called Inner Circle.  Then they kicked it up a notch by giving us a sample of a cocktail called a Killer Bee, made with Jaeger and the previously mentioned honey liqueur.  But the crowning moment was when they finished the seminar with a Bourbon Old Fashion Sorbet made by mixing the cocktail with liquid nitrogen to cool it off without watering it down. Brilliant.

This was absolutely amazing and makes me want to jump a plane to Melbourne.

Then there was the second seminar… which was simply not as impressive.  This was called “So you want to be a consultant: what it really takes”.  My mother always said to me (like most do) -  if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.  Well I’m sure she’s right, so I’m just going to say this:  If these guys were trying to work for me, we wouldn’t have made it past the presentation.  While I’m not a consultant,  I have done some consulting and I have gone through the fiery hoops necessary to please a larger client. But if you can’t get the power point presentation right or have an organized presentation why would I hire you? Enough said.

Later that night Crume and I did a little bar crawl that I will talk about later… maybe.  As we were walking down Royal Street we came across a beautiful woman supervising a bulldozer pushing sand around on the street.  When I stopped to ask what was going on she replied in a thick French accent that she was preparing a Petanque tournament that would start at midnight.  A survey of her and the stack of banners to her right and I figured that she worked for Pernod… and I knew where we would be around midnight.

Unnamed Bar Owner

Tales of The Cocktail