Tales of the Cocktail: Home Alive
Well, I'm back from New Orleans, Louisiana. It was a ridiculously awesome trip. There aren't enough words to express the awesomenicity of Tales of the Cocktail.
Last Monday I went to work with a suitcase and a laptop, and a pocket full of dreams....dreams of spending 7 days drinking non-stop from 10 in the morning until whenever I finally lost consciousness. I had my business cards, my Twitter account setup, and I was ready to party.
I worked a little over a half day, and then was driven to the airport and proceeded to wait for my flight for about 2.5 hours because they kept delaying it. It wasn't too bad. I worked on typing up my notes for a review of Rhum Clement VSOP, made some more progress on a pet-project I'm working on with Veela, and bothered people on the telephone until my flight finally showed up.
I arrived in New Orleans late Monday night, around 11:30ish, and took the 23 day cab ride in to the French Quarter to check in to my hotel, dump my stuff, call and let Veela & Yim know I had arrived safely (I'm not sure how this relationship works yet, but I'm required to check in with them now), did the same with my mom, and then decided to check out the Carousel Bar downstairs and hopefully wander out to find some food as I hadn't eaten in 6 hours.
I never made it out of the Carousel Bar. Well, technically I did...just not until they basically threw me out. I had run in to some other cocktail bloggers, bar owners, and other undesireables and ended up chatting with them until the bar stopped moving (it rotates around the bartenders) and the lights came on and they refused to serve me another sazerac. I had read another blogger's warning that one should not close down the Carousel every night.
Tuesday was the first day of the Ministry of Rum Tasting Competition. I won't go in to a lot of detail here, because I already wrote an article on it for RumDood and TalesBlog. I will say this: It was the most stressful drinking experience of my life. It was like taking a test, except rather than just your future, someone else's future hung in the balance (but not really). Silent drinking while trying to score 60+ rums is hard work.
Met up with a bunch of my fellow cocktail bloggers that night, and apparently the rum and tiki bloggers have a uniform. My neato woven cuban hat was not so distinctive all of the sudden, as it seemed all of us wore hats, had facial hair, and some sort of tropical or bowling shirt. People told us it made us easy to find in a crowd...just look for the cluster of goofy lookin' guys.
These cocktail bloggers? Some of the greatest people I've ever met. Seriously. I can't recall many other groups where I so easily fell in to OLD routines on first meeting them. It was like we didn't even have to get to know each other...we just picked up quoting Monty Python and Kids in the Hall and Star Wars and randomly bursting into showtunes in between overanalyzing every drink in front of us. It probably helped that every blogger that wasn't a professional bartender (it turns out) seems to work in computers. Computer nerds that like to drink a lot...I'm noticing a theme in my friends.
Note on Tuesday: Closed the Carousel Bar again. Not before Dr. Bamboo drew this of me on the fly while we circled the bartender though:
Wednesday was more rum tasting, followed by an avalanche of parties. Blogger Reception (hosted by Cabana Cachaca), Welcome Reception (Hosted by Beefeater), "Save The Daiquiri" (hosted by Clement), and some party suite hosted by someone different every night. I attended all of these. And when they shut down the suite party early, I ended up - where else? - the Carousel Bar until they closed it. Then I got invited to a party in a room, hosted by 2 bartenders/bar managers. Why not? Drinking until 4:30 in the morning (I think) makes you do things you wouldn't normally do...like make a drunken video recap of your day.
Thursday...um...Thursday....Thursday. What the heck did I do on Thursday? Oh right...so sessions on Thursday and a little writing. And a tour of the distillery for Old New Orleans Rum. That was amazing, and I owe Cassidy (the brand ambassador) about a dozen drinks the next time I see her for spending almost 2 hours with me there. The sessions were great. Very informative, very fun. The highlight of the day though was dinner. Thursday night was the night of our Spirited Dinners, which were multi-course dinners available at different restaurants, hosted by various master chefs and bartenders. I went to the Tiki Spirited Dinner. I won't do a full write-up, because there's a pretty good one over at Kaiser Penguin already. It was unbelieveably good.
Thursday saw my streak of nights closing the Carousel finally end - although I want a rematch because I only left when I couldn't get a drink after revolving around the bartenders for over 25 minutes. So instead we went to Absinthe House and drank there, before a few of us wandered up and down Bourbon Street for a while. Man does that place have a different sort of vibe once you become a liquor snob. Poor plebian drinkers with their plastic neon cups and slurpy machine monstrosities. I weep for the future.
Friday was more sessions, but with a twist: I caught a cold. I was miserable in the morning. I couldn't breathe, I had horrid sinus pressure, and just felt like shit. I did make it to some awesome stuff though, like Darcy's panel on Sensory Perception and Taste, where I learned that I am a "Super Taster". That's right, I taste better than most people. I'm just going to leave that out there.
Bed early on Friday because of the cold, led to Saturday, which was FULL of rum and tiki sessions, so I was busy. I liveblogged, I wrote notes, and - as I had all week - started drinking at 10:30 in the morning. Saturday was not an early night though. My record for constant drinking that week was set on Saturday, with drinks from 10:30 am to 4:30 am.
I would like to say that no one was drunk-dialed on this trip, although one person did get drunk IMed, and after concluding that it was too hard to understand messages like "im'vv b3en drtinki0n exxpnsfi rhuu's", asked me to call them. Sorry Ochre, you got what you asked for. ;-)
Sunday was the last day of sessions. After they were all over, I collected a sack of phat l00tz (rums given to me by Jeff Berry, who is ridiculously awesome), did some wandering through the quarter, and then spent the evening doing a little light drinking before flying home and working a half day on Monday.
I have soooooo much more to write. Important people I met. Fun questions I was asked (seriously, people were asking me how they can better market upscale rums to their customers and I just wanted to say, "How should I know? I buy it already.").
For now, I'm going to take a break to keep you from being incapped by a wall of text, and just share my flickr page until I can get my 4.5GB of stuff up on my site.
Last Monday I went to work with a suitcase and a laptop, and a pocket full of dreams....dreams of spending 7 days drinking non-stop from 10 in the morning until whenever I finally lost consciousness. I had my business cards, my Twitter account setup, and I was ready to party.
I worked a little over a half day, and then was driven to the airport and proceeded to wait for my flight for about 2.5 hours because they kept delaying it. It wasn't too bad. I worked on typing up my notes for a review of Rhum Clement VSOP, made some more progress on a pet-project I'm working on with Veela, and bothered people on the telephone until my flight finally showed up.
I arrived in New Orleans late Monday night, around 11:30ish, and took the 23 day cab ride in to the French Quarter to check in to my hotel, dump my stuff, call and let Veela & Yim know I had arrived safely (I'm not sure how this relationship works yet, but I'm required to check in with them now), did the same with my mom, and then decided to check out the Carousel Bar downstairs and hopefully wander out to find some food as I hadn't eaten in 6 hours.
I never made it out of the Carousel Bar. Well, technically I did...just not until they basically threw me out. I had run in to some other cocktail bloggers, bar owners, and other undesireables and ended up chatting with them until the bar stopped moving (it rotates around the bartenders) and the lights came on and they refused to serve me another sazerac. I had read another blogger's warning that one should not close down the Carousel every night.
Tuesday was the first day of the Ministry of Rum Tasting Competition. I won't go in to a lot of detail here, because I already wrote an article on it for RumDood and TalesBlog. I will say this: It was the most stressful drinking experience of my life. It was like taking a test, except rather than just your future, someone else's future hung in the balance (but not really). Silent drinking while trying to score 60+ rums is hard work.
Met up with a bunch of my fellow cocktail bloggers that night, and apparently the rum and tiki bloggers have a uniform. My neato woven cuban hat was not so distinctive all of the sudden, as it seemed all of us wore hats, had facial hair, and some sort of tropical or bowling shirt. People told us it made us easy to find in a crowd...just look for the cluster of goofy lookin' guys.
These cocktail bloggers? Some of the greatest people I've ever met. Seriously. I can't recall many other groups where I so easily fell in to OLD routines on first meeting them. It was like we didn't even have to get to know each other...we just picked up quoting Monty Python and Kids in the Hall and Star Wars and randomly bursting into showtunes in between overanalyzing every drink in front of us. It probably helped that every blogger that wasn't a professional bartender (it turns out) seems to work in computers. Computer nerds that like to drink a lot...I'm noticing a theme in my friends.
Note on Tuesday: Closed the Carousel Bar again. Not before Dr. Bamboo drew this of me on the fly while we circled the bartender though:
Wednesday was more rum tasting, followed by an avalanche of parties. Blogger Reception (hosted by Cabana Cachaca), Welcome Reception (Hosted by Beefeater), "Save The Daiquiri" (hosted by Clement), and some party suite hosted by someone different every night. I attended all of these. And when they shut down the suite party early, I ended up - where else? - the Carousel Bar until they closed it. Then I got invited to a party in a room, hosted by 2 bartenders/bar managers. Why not? Drinking until 4:30 in the morning (I think) makes you do things you wouldn't normally do...like make a drunken video recap of your day.
Thursday...um...Thursday....Thursday. What the heck did I do on Thursday? Oh right...so sessions on Thursday and a little writing. And a tour of the distillery for Old New Orleans Rum. That was amazing, and I owe Cassidy (the brand ambassador) about a dozen drinks the next time I see her for spending almost 2 hours with me there. The sessions were great. Very informative, very fun. The highlight of the day though was dinner. Thursday night was the night of our Spirited Dinners, which were multi-course dinners available at different restaurants, hosted by various master chefs and bartenders. I went to the Tiki Spirited Dinner. I won't do a full write-up, because there's a pretty good one over at Kaiser Penguin already. It was unbelieveably good.
Thursday saw my streak of nights closing the Carousel finally end - although I want a rematch because I only left when I couldn't get a drink after revolving around the bartenders for over 25 minutes. So instead we went to Absinthe House and drank there, before a few of us wandered up and down Bourbon Street for a while. Man does that place have a different sort of vibe once you become a liquor snob. Poor plebian drinkers with their plastic neon cups and slurpy machine monstrosities. I weep for the future.
Friday was more sessions, but with a twist: I caught a cold. I was miserable in the morning. I couldn't breathe, I had horrid sinus pressure, and just felt like shit. I did make it to some awesome stuff though, like Darcy's panel on Sensory Perception and Taste, where I learned that I am a "Super Taster". That's right, I taste better than most people. I'm just going to leave that out there.
Bed early on Friday because of the cold, led to Saturday, which was FULL of rum and tiki sessions, so I was busy. I liveblogged, I wrote notes, and - as I had all week - started drinking at 10:30 in the morning. Saturday was not an early night though. My record for constant drinking that week was set on Saturday, with drinks from 10:30 am to 4:30 am.
I would like to say that no one was drunk-dialed on this trip, although one person did get drunk IMed, and after concluding that it was too hard to understand messages like "im'vv b3en drtinki0n exxpnsfi rhuu's", asked me to call them. Sorry Ochre, you got what you asked for. ;-)
Sunday was the last day of sessions. After they were all over, I collected a sack of phat l00tz (rums given to me by Jeff Berry, who is ridiculously awesome), did some wandering through the quarter, and then spent the evening doing a little light drinking before flying home and working a half day on Monday.
I have soooooo much more to write. Important people I met. Fun questions I was asked (seriously, people were asking me how they can better market upscale rums to their customers and I just wanted to say, "How should I know? I buy it already.").
For now, I'm going to take a break to keep you from being incapped by a wall of text, and just share my flickr page until I can get my 4.5GB of stuff up on my site.