Apéritif
Tales of the Cocktail is a festival to bring those passionate about cocktails together for seminars, tastings, networking and celebration. Distillers, bartenders, brand ambassadors and cocktails geeks come from all over the world for this industry event. .
Yours truly will be live-blogging the convention this year. Here we go.
DAY 2
Bacardi's 4th Annual Ode to the Bowl kicked off the Tales parties in style early this morning. Ten teams from different cities (and countries) bowled against each other. Team New Orleans was represented by local bar owners and managers Ricky Gomez, Neal Bodenheimer, Kirk Estopinal, and Evan Wolf. But the luck of the Irish won out with Team Ireland taking first place.
Bacardi brought along a DJ, a hula hooping contest, lots of food, and of course several punches, a daiquiri stand, and Peroni and Cazadores for a Beer & Shot combo.
This (actual) morning, Daniel Krieger hosted his cocktail photography seminar and Tim Herlihy hosted his seminar about how Irish pubs took over the world. The only thing about Tales is that there's so many interesting sessions running alongside each other that it's sometimes hard to decide how to divide up your time.
By noon, the lobby of the Monteleone was as packed as Carousel Bar usually is on Friday night. This means the room was arguably spinning and there were wall-to-wall people. But since everyone at this convention is friends or "family," no one seemed to mind too much.
Toast To Tales went off spendidly with Ann Tuennerman making a big announcement: Tales of the Cocktail has acquired New Orleans Daiquiri Festival, so now we get another extra Tales event every year. Super exciting. (Personal aside: The daiquiri is probably the true drink of New Orleans. Rich people drink Sazeracs. Literally everyone drinks daiquiris.)
Ann and her consort and co-founder Paul went on to a Dynamic Duo (Trio) with Marc Dekuyper featuring Mandarine Napoleon. The event was extremely well attended with everyone trying to "Conquer Tales." Good times.
Danny Meyer made his keynote address at the Harrah's Theatre, to raucous applause.
Four days left. Wish me luck.
Up Next:
Dinner at Doris Metropolitan with my friends from Martin Miller's Gin. William Grant & Sons hosts its 2084: Yonderyear Party at the WWII Museum.
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Andrew Marin writes about cocktails and food for Where Y’at Magazine, and his liver is running the Tales gauntlet again this year. Follow him @ndrewmarin on Twitter and Instagram and add andrewmarin on Snapchat for live updates.
