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by Liza Weisstuch |
September 08, 2008
Maybe it’s because of Olympics fever, but on a Tuesday night in early August, there’s a palpable sense of anticipation and anxiety, those trusty bedfellows of competition. Dandies, swells, hipsters, and a motley crew of cocktail enthusiasts pour into Green Street. Some carry boxes of glassware and make their way upstairs. Some read to themselves from tightly clutched scraps of paper, glancing up to greet familiar faces. They’ve come to drink, to be sure, but this is to be a night when conversation will intermittently stop and all attention will be fixed. This is mixology as a spectator sport.
More and more, liquor companies are turning to the experts — the worldwide bartending community — and inviting them to apply their fluency in the fundamentals of bartending and innovation to invent a drink, often using a designated product. But more than just an exercise in originality and resourcefulness, cocktail competitions, which are becoming something of an industry standard, provide a forum where the spotlight, which all too often shines most brightly on the finished product, shifts to the execution of intricate techniques and the bartenders themselves. You might call it the Iron Chef–ization of the bar, but talk to enough drink wizards who take the time to formulate new recipes for submission to various contests — and Boston has its fair share — and you uncover a basic fact: when you dare a mixologist to invent a drink, the most indispensible ingredient is imagination.
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