Denver Magazine / June 2010 / Diary of a Pro

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Diary of a Pro

As lifelong bartender Sean Kenyon prepares to join national bartending greats at the annual gathering of the United States Bartenders’ Guild, Tales of the Cocktail, in New Orleans next month, he share tales of last year’s storied event.

I’ve been a bartender all of my adult life. I love what I do and am proud to call it a career. In recent years I have seen our craft and community grow incredibly as opportunities for higher education, competition, and networking have increased tenfold. For years I heard amazing stories from the convention that has become known simply as “Tales.” Work commitments kept getting in the way, but I decided nothing would stop me from attending in 2009. Last July, I boarded a plane for New Orleans.

Wednesday, July 8
2:45 pm Humidity slaps me in the face at Louis Armstrong Airport.

4:15 pm Arrival at the St. Louis Hotel, one block from the epicenter of “Tales,” the Hotel Monteleone, and adjacent to the unofficial nightly meeting point, the Old Absinthe House. My location will be either fortuitous or deadly.

6 pm Opening night party at The Roosevelt Hotel sponsored by Beefeater. Men are dressed as beefeaters, the ceremonial guards of the Tower of London; beautiful hostesses are clothed in British flag dresses; DJs are spinning records; there’s great food and, of course, handcrafted cocktails. There are at least 500 people and a who’s who of the most famous bartenders in the country, including Dale DeGroff, the King of Cocktails.

8 pm Dinner with some of my local distributors and the DeGroffs. Dale is credited with jumpstarting the revival of mixology while at New York City’s Rainbow Room and with his books The Craft of the Cocktail and The Essential Cocktail. His wife, Jill, is an illustrator who created a book of bartender portraits called Lush Life. “You are an actor behind the bar,” Dale says. “It’s a complex job, and you need to approach it that way.”

10 pm Cocktail jam at Herbsaint. On-
the-fly creations for a packed house. Many shots of Averna (an Italian herbal liqueur) consumed.

Thursday, July 9
9 am Paul Pacult’s Spirits Tasting and the Wonders of the Palate. Paul, author of the highly regarded newsletter Spirit Journal, is one of the world’s foremost spirits experts. Tasting seven different spirits, we learned that, unlike wine, spirits should be nosed with the mouth open. Taste with two sips, swishing the first around to prepare the palate for the tasting sip, which should fall over the tongue and coat the mouth. Spit, purse the lips, and breathe in through the mouth to get a full flavor range.

1 pm Sugar Cane Spirits from Around the World. Molasses-based rum vs. rum agricole (made from sugar cane) vs. Brazilian cachaça. The winner? Rum. In large part because the mixologist representing it is the most sober of the panelists.

8 pm Anika Zappe of Root Down and I head to the Old Absinthe House. The party has taken over the intersection of Bienville and Bourbon streets. We catch up with some San Francisco counterparts and trek to the bottom of Bourbon to check out Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, a rickety shack reputed to be the oldest bar in North America. Two blocks into the journey, Borys
Saciuk of Michael Mina’s Clock Bar bolts into a karaoke bar and belts out an amazing version of Prince’s “Raspberry Beret,” complete with dance moves. Needless to say, the rest of the night’s details are hazy.

Friday, July 10
11 am The Japanese Way of Bartending, conducted by Stanislav Vadrna, a native of Bratislava and the only non-Japanese protégé of Kazuo Uyeda, the world’s most famous Japanese bartender. Practices are based on the tea ceremony with great emphasis on presentation and service.

3 pm Legends of American Whiskey. Fred Noe of Jim Beam, Bill Samuels of Wild Turkey, Harlan Wheatley of Buffalo Trace, and Tom Bulleit of Bulleit. I’m pretty psyched to hear these guys heap praise on Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. Noe talked about the percentage of whiskey that naturally evaporates from each barrel, commonly referred to as “the angel’s share”: “Since Dad (Booker Noe, Jim Beam’s master distiller) passed away,” he says, “I call it ‘Booker’s share.’ It was probably 4 percent before he passed. Now it’s probably 6 to 8. As much as he drank here on Earth, now he can do it 24 hours a day, seven days a week with all of his new buddies up there.”

5 pm I get behind the bar at the Hotel Monteleone for Grand Marnier, muddling mint and lemon for two hours. We also drink a good bit of Grand Marnier Cuvée du Cent Cinquentenaire, a 150-year-old blend.

11 pm Steve Olson, an industry icon, is hosting an underground event for Grand Marnier at Tommy’s Cuisine on Tchoupitoulas Street. Elbow-to-elbow industry folks are waiting to get in, and even Dale DeGroff is having no luck. But in the street, there’s Tequila Ocho and Four Grain Bourbon from Hudson Whiskey to be found. Flashes of memory include a visit to a bar called The Swizzle Stick and lobster po’ boys at a greasy spoon.

Saturday, July 11
8 am At some point last night, Danny Ronen, a bartender from San Francisco, and I decided we would participate in the San Fermin in Nueva Orleans, a Running-of-the-Bulls–type event involving Roller Derby girls wielding Wiffle Ball bats and wearing horns. Sounded brilliant last night. Wearing all white with a red sash (purchased from Walgreens), we run, sweating whiskey and squinting in the sunshine. I am pretty beat up, but we have a great time. We end up in a bar called the Erin Rose drinking sweet tea vodka (yuck!) until noon.

1 pm Carnivorous Cocktails. Exactly what it sounds like ... meat in cocktails. Seems like an hour-long commercial for bacon vodka.

3 pm The Museum of the American Cocktail — a pictorial timeline depicting the history of the cocktail. What strikes me is the stark similarity between bar tools from 1860 and the ones we use today such as cocktail spoons and shaker tins. How many professions can claim the same connection to their history?

8 pm Spirit Awards at Harrah’s. Every year, a traditional New Orleans funeral procession is held for a dying cocktail. This year the Red Headed Slut was put out of our misery.

Sunday, July 12
1 am The Plymouth Bartender’s Breakfast. Iconic cocktail bars — Cure in New Orleans, PDT in New York, The Varnish in L.A. — have their own stations. There is a jazz band and fantastic food. No worries, no drama, just great cocktails and many laughs. It is good to be surrounded by like-minded family.

Sean Kenyon is an award-winning bartender and Denver Magazine’s 2009 Mixologist of the Year. He runs the cocktail programs at Vesta and Steuben’s.