This week’s installment of The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess brought to you by the Small Screen Network brings you the Chas Cocktail. According to Robert Hess, “A good bartender inspires patrons with their creativity, skill and service behind the bar. Watching a master at work can do that. It is rare, however, when a patron inspires a bartender. Thus was the case with the Chas Cocktail created by Murray Stenson at Zig Zag Café in Seattle and named after Chuck Talbot, a regular at the bar with a love for Bourbon.”
We chose to highlight this cocktail to honor Murray Stenson, known by many to be one of the best bartenders in America and who was voted “Best Bartender in America” by his peers at the 2010 Tales of the Cocktail festival. We find this cocktail to be most fitting for today’s post as Murray worked his last shit at Zig Zag on May 27th and he is moving to Michael Mina’s RN74, set to open June 13th where he will tend bar. On the move, Murray said “I’d been at Zig Zag for 10 years. I’m looking to simplify. I’m really old, and Zig Zag is a young man’s bar.” He’ll do this at RN74, where the bar is smaller and the focus is a bit more on the food than the cocktails. No worries though as Zig Zag Café is still in very capable hands with bartender Erik Hakkinen who has been working at Zig Zag with Murray for the last three years.
Cheers Murray!
The Chas Cocktail
- 2 1/2 oz Maker’s Mark Bourbon
- 1/4 oz Amaretto
- 1/4 oz Benedictine
- d1/4 oz Cointreau
- 1/4 oz Orange Curaçao
For eight years Tales of the Cocktail has been bringing cocktail aficionados, from around the world, to New Orleans. What began as a small gathering of cocktail enthusiasts and professionals has grown to become the premier cocktail festival, serving as an annual meeting place for the world’s most influential professionals.
For the first time, this internationally acclaimed cocktail festival is taking its show on the
road with Tales of the Cocktail on Tour. This first mini-festival will be held in
Vancouver, March 13-15, 2011, and will feature a series of events and seminars designed
to give everyone a taste of what’s in store at Tales of the Cocktail 2011. Continue Reading »
The first ever Cabana Cachaca Bartender Olympics will be held outside the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans on Thursday, July 22nd from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm. The Cabana Cachaca 2010 Bartender Olympics will be broken up into three distinct challenges: Speed, Knowledge and Creativity.
“We’ve designed the challenges around skills that every good bartender already has and uses each time they are behind their own bar. What will make this event exciting is the teams are made of the best of the best, and they are competing in front of an audience of their peers.” — Matti Anttila, founder and president of Cabana Cachaca. Continue Reading »
Diageo World Class Bartender of the Year Erik Lorincz (Connaught Bar, London) with the judges (left to right) Gary Regan, Dale DeGroff, Peter Dorelli, Alberto Soria, Salvatore Calabrese, Hidetsugu Ueno and 2009 winner Aristotelis Papadopoulos
Over the past year, 9000 of the world’s best bartenders competed in regional events all over the world to become the next Diageo Reserve World Class 2010 Bartender of the Year. Continue Reading »
After 76 beverage-fueled years, Angelo Cammarata, the longest tenured bartender in the world is calling it quits.
“Only minutes after Prohibition died in 1933, Angelo Cammarata, 19, served a 10-cent bottle of Fort Pitt beer to a customer in his father’s neighborhood grocery.”
“Guinness World Records dubbed him the longest-serving bartender a decade ago, and he’s earned induction into Jim Beam’s Bartender Hall of Fame and numerous other honors.”
Read the full story for “World’s oldest bartender, 95, is retiring in Pa.” on Yahoo! News.
Photography by Jenn FarringtonThis May dozens of San Francisco’s top bartenders threw 22 events hosted in 20 bars over eight days, which were attended by droves of thirsty people. This was the third year of San Francisco Cocktail Week and the event continues to grow.
The celebration was anchored by large cocktail parties at the beginning and end of the week. In between were the United States Bartenders’ Guild National Mixology Contest, a happy hour social beneath the Bay Bridge, and a farmer’s market cocktail event where the city’s best bartenders sliced, diced, muddled and juiced California’s fresh produce into equally fresh cocktails. Continue Reading »
