In ‘It’s a Strange World: Part One’, Nick Strangeway has some stern words for bartenders of today:

“Bartenders today are obsessed with the Japanese hard shake and cutting ice from big blocks, they force history down people’s throats and inflict their techniques on customers, putting foam on something for sake of it,” he says. “They don’t realise that if it takes 20 minutes to make, it’s a shit drink. And they never sit the opposite side of the bar, they won’t check the toilets.”

I have a huge amount of respect for Nick, but can’t completely agree with him here. It’s another case of referring to ‘the industry’ and ‘bartenders’ as things one encounters only within a 10 mile radius of central London.

There are a great many bars in the UK that balance creative drinks and expansive knowledge with showing guests a good time; good old fashioned bartending in other words – Take a trip to cities like Bristol, Reading, Oxford, Manchester and Leeds, or indeed London suburbs like Clapham, and it is the norm, rather than the exception.

While I totally agree with what he says when it comes to some of the pseudo-speakeasies that have cropped up in the Capital, I find myself feeling frustrated yet again on behalf of bartenders and bar owners outside of London.

To get a real view of the ‘state of the nation’, one has to get out and see it. That means travelling all over the country, visiting bars that aren’t always in the news, speaking to bartenders who don’t go on all the press junkets, and judging cocktail competitions regardless of their location or stature.

This article is not meant as a criticism of Nick, more so of the consistent lack of credit and coverage given to non-London bars when talking about the UK bar industry as a whole. His points are absolutely valid, but should only be applied to a tiny percentage of bars and bartenders in the UK.

The racetrack had been taken over by body-modders, Teddy Boys and rocking billies for the weekend, with dozens of great artists from all over the UK inking up the punters.

I was pretty sure a few familiar faces would appear in the crowd, and sure enough I bumped into Sahara Bar’s Dean MacGregor on his way to filling up some more skin-real estate. The boys and girls on the Sailor Jerry stand also furnished me with rum, which was, of course, excellent.

Resurrecting the tradition of Life magazine in the 60s, we bring you a mini photo-story (but with images of considerably poorer quality) from the Brighton Tattoo Convention.

A dog and a duck.... playing.

This week the rather nebulous subject of cocktails in pubs gets a beating, and to be honest, we here at BarLifeUK think it is a crock of shit.

In part, the article says:

““Tuesday night is cocktail night”, proclaimed another pub poster we saw recently, in laminated laser printed glory – about as attractive an idea as Happy Hour at the Queen Vic with Dot Cotton for company….
Pubs should stick to what they’re good at and leave cocktails to the experts.”

Now it occurs to me that anyone who cares about the bar industry wants to see it grow and be successful. People who do a good job should earn a good living and bartenders should be able to open their own bars when they are ready.

All of these things are contingent on customers walking through the door and spending money. This is something that often gets forgotten by industry commentators – bars operate by selling drinks to customers, not wanking on about obscure spirits.

Anything that gets customers with money in their pockets reaching for a cocktail instead of a pint of Stella can only be a good thing for the bar industry. That’s why high street operators like B@1 are owed a debt of gratitude by high-end bars. They begin a process of cocktail education for a whole raft of Friday night revelers who might not think to walk into Match Bar. And almost as importantly, get them used to paying £7 plus for a drink.

The obvious counter to this position is that punters trying their first cocktail in a boozer may have a bad experience that puts them off for life. Well, yes, that might happen. But for every bad experience there will surely be a good one, or at least an ok one, and that’s one more cocktail convert for the cause.

Much has been made in the press of the huge numbers of pubs closing in the UK every day. There is a view, subscribed to by BarLifeUK, that cream rises to the top. Many of the pubs that have closed in these tough economic times have been grubby Dog and Duck dives with stinking toilets, flat beer and the ability to rob a person of their will to live.

The pubs that continue to prosper tend to be reasonably well run, and many that fall into the ‘gastro’ bracket have great staff, great food and solid spirits offerings. You add into this mix the activity of the various brand training teams, and you can expect the quality of simple cocktails to steadily improve in pubs – feeding more and more new customers into cocktail bars.

While I agree that there are horses for courses – if I want a Martini I’ll go to a bar – writing off the cocktail efforts of the entire pub sector is short sighted and foolish. Drinks journalists should remember that their readers earn a crust by selling drinks to people, and the more people buying, the thicker the crust for everyone.

For the record, neither Ueno San or Ian Burrell are the bartender who had the panic attack last year. This is just bad picture positioning.

This is not a character you would expect to have panic attacks, no shy retiring violet is he.

But when you think about Tales, how it gathers God knows how many bartenders together in one place and plies them with booze for FIVE DAYS, in a city that bakes you into humid submission, it’s not surprising that mind, body and soul may be stretched a little thin by the time your departure gate is called.

I don’t know what my mental image of Tales of the Cocktail was before I went. I suppose I had a vague notion of it being a bit like a huge trade show, with the Hotel Monteleone as the venue. But it’s not like that at all.

The hotel is the epicenter to be sure, with most of the seminars and tasting sessions taking place there, but it is much larger and looser than a trade show.

In fact a large chunk of New Orleans’ French Quarter seemed taken over by Tales, to the extent it was impossible to walk from one place to another without running into someone you knew, from countries all over the World.

The Sailor Jerry party at New Orleans' World War 2 museum

And this is where you realise there are two sides to Tales – the events and the people.

I’ll be brutally honest about the former – I was often too hungover to get to the morning sessions, and of the afternoon ones I attended, it was often something I had seen before at one of the trade shows.

There were exceptions of course. Stanlislav Vardna’s session on the Swizzle was weird and entertaining (a full report of this will follow), the Sailor Jerry party at NOLA’s World War 2 museum was brilliant, Jason Crawley’s ‘From Persia to Ponies’ (Gulab to Julep, really?) seminar was great and the Spirited Awards were fun (if unrewarding for BarLifeUK).

But, I came to the conclusion that New Orleans is a long way to go for a few entertaining seminars and the occasional brand-sponsored party.

People Power

Painted on the window of D.B.A on Frenchman Street

The real reason to go is the people, to see that the bar industry really is a bar community, and that its members really do give a shit about each other.

This was illustrated in mind blowing and, dare I say, life changing scale, during the Second Line parade far Ray Deter.

Ray’s is a name you might recognise. He owned D.B.A bars in New Orleans and New York. Shortly before Tales, he was tragically killed in a bike accident at the age of 53. Friends and family arranged for a Second Line parade to be held for him during Tales and I’ve never seen anything like it.

At around 7pm, people began to congregate outside D.B.A on Frenchman street. In no time at all, a crowd of at least 1000 people were filling the street and a jazz band began to play. The band then marched down the street and the crowd followed.

Motorcycle cops on CHiPS Harleys raced ahead of the crowd to close off side streets and bottles of rum and beer were being passed back and forth within the crowd, which was to a person dancing and singing.

After a halfway stop, the procession headed back to D.B.A as the sun was setting. Everyone involved was dripping with sweat and the band stepped up the intensity of their playing, with back beat drums and dirty horns whipping the dancing crowd up into a frenzy.

Just a small part of the crowd at Ray Deter's Second Line parade

It’s difficult to describe the energy in the air at that point – it was a proper ‘hairs on the back of your neck’ moment, and without doubt the most fitting way I can think of to say goodbye to a clearly much-loved bartender.

Obviously this sort of thing is a New Orleans tradition, but so many international bartenders who had never met Ray came along to pay their respects and soak up the experience that it says a lot about solidarity within the bar community.

As the days went on, I realised that my favourite moments were coming away from the organised events, when we would run into old friends and bar hop, or grab some food, or find a jazz band to listen to.

Semper Fidelis

BarLifeUK pretending to be gracious in defeat at the Spirited Awards

The great thing about Tales is spending a week in a bar industry bubble. It’s a bit like living in a town where there are no strangers. Everywhere you look, there is a friendly face to have a drink and a laugh with. It felt strange to come home and walk to the corner shop without bumping into a bartender and I have to say, I missed it.

At the Sailor Jerry party at the World War 2 museum, I read a plaque that listed the unofficial motto of the US Marines. It said: “Never run when you can walk, never walk when you can sit, never sit when you can sleep and never pass up a supply of drinking water”.

It’s good advice for the travelling bartender too, especially at Tales and you should follow it next year, if you go and spend a week inside the bar industry bubble.

Huge thanks must go to Buffalo Trace for flying us to the USA… An account of our visit to their distillery is coming soon.

Alex Ott - Get Over yourself (the man in the picture isn't Alex Ott, I just couldn't be bothered to photoshop him out)

In a staggeringly painful New York Times article, Mr Alex Ott can be seen cloistered in his ‘cocktail laboratory’, apparently attempting to distil every ounce of joy from some form alcohol or other.

Now, I don’t know Ott. I’d never heard of him until someone sent me a link to the NYT article, but the line “Bartenders should never be people who come up with cocktails, because they have no education” is a bit of an attention grabber and I forced myself to read on.

Paraphrasing the article, Alex Ott has been there, seen it and done it. Apparently there isn’t a Hollywood A-lister he hasn’t served, and over time, customers, to him at any rate, have become “individual biospheres that I could manipulate with my drinks”.

It may well be that Mr Ott has been misrepresented by a journalist – his remarks may have been made with tongue firmly in cheek, or at the behest of the owner of the amazing new ‘anti-hangover’ drink he is pleased to be associated with (fizzy milk thistle, which he made palatable by adding lemon juice), but somehow, I don’t think so.

His interview reminds me of a certain type of person you increasingly encounter in the bar industry – someone who should have got out before they forgot what bars are all about, namely having a good time.

I can understand and applaud certain bartenders’ desire to look back at drinks from the past in order to develop their skills and find inspiration, or those who constantly search for different and unusual ingredients in order to push the boundaries of accepted cocktail wisdom.

However I can’t understand, and can’t abide, the type of bartender who has fallen so far up himself that he (or she) has forgotten that they should be doing all of this exploring and experimenting for one reason – to deliver the best possible experience to the punter on the other side of the bar who is paying for the drink.

Hipsters suck

This might seem like a moot point right now, because there are members of the public, normally seen with ironic 70s facial hair and v-neck sweaters, who will quite happily pay to experience this sort of nonsense.

But it won’t last. I queued for half an hour in the cold and rain to get into a distinctly ‘not full’ Experimental Cocktail Club a few weeks ago, only to be told by a man dressed like a leprechaun that I was not permitted to have a daiquiri made with the rum of my choosing.

Now I absolutely encourage and welcome suggestions from bartenders, but I know how I like my daiquiris, and to be told point blank “we don’t make them like that’… Well frankly you can fuck right off. I’ll never spend money there again.

The thing is, over the next year or so, every Hipster in the world will have gone to every Alex Ott-tended bar in the world, and they will realise that once the mystique has gone, they really aren’t very enjoyable to frequent, and slowly but surely they will close.

Contrast that to bars like Trailer Happiness or Socio Rehab, who manage to make great drinks and show you a bloody good time as well… Those bars have been around for years, and will keep going for years more because having fun never goes out of fashion.

I shall leave you now with a few words from Mr Ott himself. His talents know no bounds, he’s even familiar with your mum:

“I can make a cocktail that will take you back 30 years… If you tell me what you had as a child, I can take you there in one second — take you back to when your mommy tucked you in and gave you a hot chocolate. The same exact scent.”

Not a man to get stuck in a lift with, eh?

Reetmach Beeyatch

Just over a year ago, the organisers of Northern Restaurant and Bar came to us and said they wanted to improve the ‘bar’ bit of their show, and to attract more of the North’s bartenders. We signed on to help with this, and they subsequently gave us a corner of the exhibition to run as the BarLife Show.

We knew immediately what sort of thing the theatre needed to host in order to bring in bartenders (Tiki-Off, Rematch etc) and also the type of brands that the show would need in order to be relevant to cocktail makers.

We also knew that introducing regional qualifying heats to the Northern Bartender of the Year competition would both increase the kudos attached to the title as well as giving us a chance to tour the North and drum up support for the show.

In total we spent just under two weeks in the North for the heats and the BarLife Show, in Chester, Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester, and were blown away by the level of enthusiasm and passion we encountered.

We drank some amazing drinks, both in the competition heats and in the many bars we visited, and were thanked on quite a few occasions for giving some love to the North. It has to be said that the bar industry media is, for the most part, very London-centric – a trend we are proud to be bucking and we will endevour to keep our coverage inclusive of the UKs entire bar community.

The BarLife Show itself went by in a bit of a blur for me – The Northern Bartender of the Year finals were followed quickly by a Tiki-Off that nearly ended the show prematurely, rum sessions by Ian Burrell and the award-winning Stefanie Holt, molecular mixology demonstrations, talks on punch and winning cocktail competitions by The Liquorists – The BarLife area was in constant use and I’ve never seen a trade show theatre so full for so long.

All of this was flanked by some of the best brands in the business – their support made the whole thing possible and I was very happy to see such a huge proportion of the Northern bartending community visiting them and tasting their prtoducts.

In short, the North really put its money where its mouth is. They asked for a bartender’s show, and when it arrived they got involved and turned up in their hundreds, and we would like to say thanks for your support!

Special thanks must go to:

• Aloha, Hula and Keko Moku for setting fire to the carpet
• Everyone who chanced their arm, and ritual humiliation, by entering Reetmatch
• Jameson Irish Whiskey for sponsoring the comp
• El Dorado Rum for supporting the Tiki-Off and a great talk by Stefanie Holt that at one stage discussed giant otters
• Ian Burrell for doing what he does best, and judging the bartender comp
• The Molecular Mixology boys for a great demo and good-naturedly taking stick about foams as garnishes
• Ice Cubed for supplying enough ice to make the Titanic blush
• Jody Monteith and Tom Sneesby of The Liquorists, for making us laugh, some great presentations and a Tommy’s just when we needed it
• Diageo, Inspirit Brands, BarBlades, Tribe, Cellar Trends & Global Brands for laughing at our hangovers on day one of the show and making the whole thing possible.

Only a matter of time

This made me excited, because the hour you spend in store upgrading is the only time a network will treat you with dignity and respect and, to be honest, I’ll take a little bit of love wherever I can find it.

So I trotted along to the T-Mobile store and after 60 minutes of being called ‘bruv’, I trotted home again with a shiny new iPhone 4.

This was an easy choice because I am in the thrall of Demon Prince Steve Jobs, being one of those smug people that Charlie Brooker hates for saying “Macs just work”.

And so it was with the iPhone… It just works. I had an HTC before, which in contrast, only just worked, and so the iPhone was at first a joy to use.

And then I realised it is possessed. By the spirit of a lemming.

My iPhone 4 falls off of everything I put it on. Flat level table? Falls off. Arm of the sofa? Falls off. Desk? Falls off.

It has come to the point now that every time I sit down, there is an expensive sounding thunk a few seconds later as my phone throws itself to the floor. Much to the amusement of my iPhone-hating colleague.

I think Apple have managed to engineer it so perfectly that it doesn’t work in the real world – it is so flat that a little cushion of air gets trapped beneath, and it hovercrafts off of even the flattest surface.

And it is made almost exclusively out of glass – there is no way this thing is going to last 18 months.

Anyway, as you can tell, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the bar industry, aside I suppose from the fact that lots of bartenders have iPhones.

Does yours do it? Or am I the proud owner of a suicidal mobile phone?

Vote for me, or the puppy gets it.

The Imbibe Personality of the Year Award has certainly got people talking, and asking for votes.

Now, I don’t have a problem with this at all in principle. It’s notoriously difficult to judge industry awards in a way that people will agree with, and peer voting has been tried before.

However, it reminds me of ‘Battle of the Bands’ competitions that I entered during my abortive attempt to get famous and sleep with groupies.

Battle of the Band competitions involve sending a demo to the competition organisers, which gets put online, and the song which receives the most votes wins a recording contract.

This system is fundamentally flawed if you like good music, because it rewards popularity, not talent. A university band who could get 2,000 students to vote for them would invariably win, and invariably be shit. A great little band that no-one had heard of stood no chance, despite being fantastic at what they did.

I am not saying that the nominees for the Imbibe award are shit. Far from it, Imbibe know what they are doing and have picked great characters. It just seems like these guys get a lot of love already.

Everyone knows who they are; their very deserved reputations span the entire UK and they get a ton of coverage already. Do we really need another award that recognises individuals already recognised as being at the top of their game?

I can imagine that a young, talented bartender might look at this and think the industry is an impenetrable collective of big names who win awards because lots of people have heard of them, and will vote for them having never sipped a drop of one of their drinks.

It’s time the industry’s brands and media turned their attention to the next generation of bartenders trying to climb the ladder. We know who the big dogs are, you can change the record now.

Ninetyeight Bar and Lounge, Shoreditch, on opening night

No doubt we aren’t the only people saying it, but this year has flown by and we can’t quite believe that BarLifeUK is almost a year old.

We have had a fantastic time so far, thanks in large part to the hospitality afforded to us by the UK’s bar community.

So, if you’ve served us a drink, or put up with us asking be be served one more than we probably should, we salute you!

And if we didn’t make it to your joint, we will redouble our efforts next year and do our best to double the size of this list.

• 8 Bar
• Above Audio
• Aura
• B@1
• Babel
• Barrio Central
• Barrio North
• Bec Bar
• Benugo Bar
• Black Dog Ballroom
• Blanche House
• Callooh Callay
• Circus
• Coleston Yard
• Coronation Tap
• Cottons
• Crazy Bear
• Grace
• Graphic Bar
• Hausbar
• Hawksmore
• Hide Bar
• Highlands (NYC)
• Hix Selfridges
• Hix Soho
• Hogs and Heiffers (NYC)
• Hospital
• Hush
• Hyde and Co
• Inamo
• Keko Moku
• La Perla
• LAB
• London Arts Club
• Mahiki
• Marvel
• Merkaba Bar
• Momo
• Nightjar
• Ninetyeight Bar and Lounge
• Obsidian
• Princess Pavilion
• Shunt
• Smoke Bar
• Socio Rehab
• Soho House
• The Anthologist
• The Blues Kitchen
• The Cuckoo Club
• The Grill on the Alley
• The Hoxton Pony
• The Jane (NYC)
• The Lexington
• The Park
• The Portobello Star
• The River Rooms
• The Rummer
• The St James
• Trailer Happiness
• Walrus
• Wax Jambu
• Zero Degrees

Well, we were right (see below for original story), Salvatore is indeed going to be at the helm of the new Playboy club when it opens next year, as this press release confirms:

Salvatore’s at the Playboy Club London is a bespoke design, created by Salvatore in conjunction with acclaimed London-based interior designers Jestico & Whiles. Salvatore will be bringing his own hand-picked staff, ensuring that his bar provides the ultimate experience for members.  The bar will be situated on the ground floor of the newly-developed Playboy Club, and as with the rest of the Playboy Club, Salvatore’s bar will be run on an exclusive members only basis.

“My vision is to create the best, most luxurious cocktail bar experience in the world” said Salvatore Calabrese. “I am really excited to be working with LCI and Playboy on this venture and am confident that with our combined experience and reputation together we will create the ultimate bar destination in the capital.”

Congratulations to Playboy Enterprises for nabbing the Maestro. We look forward to the press opening with great anticipation…

Original Story – Playboy’s impending return to the London bar and club scene has been well documented by the consumer press.

The various papers and websites seem to have fallen into two camps, leading their stories with either ‘objectification of women’ or ‘phwoar’ sentiments.

Whichever way your moral compass points, the fact remains that the new Playboy Club will likely be one of the most talked about London openings next year.

Playboy Enterprises are making a great deal of the brand’s ‘heritage’ and the calibre of guest the original club welcomed in the 60s (think Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Joan Collins, George Best et al.)

BarLifeUK were discussing this at the time the story broke in the consumer press. We said to each other: “High profile members-only launch? Celebrities? Casino? That’s got Salvatore written all over it.”

As it turns out, conversation turned again to the subject one night during London Cocktail Week, and a person ‘in the know’ seemed to confirm our suspicions.

Calabrese’s agent and London Clubs International (who will operate the new Playboy venue) have not returned our calls, so we can’t bring you definitive confirmation on the subject, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?

We hope so, because London has been too long without The Maestro.

If O'Leary gets his way, Otto really will be your co-pilot

There are few things as likely to make you question your worth as a human being as much as a Ryanair flight. They are not so much a passenger airline as a human haulage company.

O’Leary’s latest proposal to ‘bring down the cost of flights and pass the saving on to the customer’ is to remove the co-pilot from short haul journeys.

According to him, the co-pilot is simply there to “make sure the first fella doesn’t fall asleep and knock over one of the computer controls”.

Now while it may be true that most commercial planes take off, fly and land themselves these days, I think most people want a person behind the (joy) stick in case the computer blows a fuse. And another person behind the other stick, in case the first one has a heart attack.

This made me think about bartending.

I’m sure the technology exists to plug a cocktail recipe database into some sort of vending machine that could pump out perfectly good cocktails.

I get the mental image of lots of pipes leading from the premium bottles on the back bar and into some quasi-human-looking robot arm that moves with the efficiency of a Japanese production line robot.

These days, with voice recognition and rudimentary artificial intelligence, it could probably knock something together based on the spoken request “Um, I’d like something sweetish, but not too sweet, with coconut, but no lime. And make it blue”.

Accountants would love this. Yes, there’d be a hefty initial outlay, but once you had the thing, there’d be no wages to pay. No training or development required. No chance of it shagging the boss’ daughter or giving free drinks to its mates.

Just the occasional software update, via iTunes.

This can't be a good thing

Customers, on the other had, would utter a collective groan and head to Tesco for a bottle of cheap vodka which they would drink at home in front of the X Factor.

It would be the death of every bar that adopted it, because we are humans and we need the human touch.

Gaz Regan has written many pages about the various roles the bartender plays in one shift. He understands this far better than me, so I won’t take this rant in that direction.

My problem is that more and more decisions that affect the world we live in are made by soulless people who just want to make more money. And these decisions are often ones that we cannot affect or protest.

Michael O’Leary and his ilk are the enemies of life’s simple pleasures, like being treated with respect by an organisation you are paying money for a service.

Or a well-made drink, served by a personable bartender who is happy to be doing his job.

Ergo, Michael O’Leary is the enemy of the bar industry. Think about that next time you book a cheap flight to Ibiza, and choose how to spend your money wisely.

You wake in a dark room, with a pounding head, dry mouth and palpitations.

Try explaining that away

Laying there, trying to figure out if you need Neurofen, food or booze to ease the pain, a creeping feeling of guilt and shame washes over you.

For a while you wrack you brain, trying to remember what you did last night, and where this ominous feeling is coming from. Did I act like a wanker in my bar? Did I get in a fight? Did I spend too much money? Did I kiss someone I shouldn’t have?

And then you reach for your mobile.

Ah, shit.

Mobile phones are ubiquitous these days. In fact, if you are a young bartender, the chances are you can’ t remember the days when we didn’t have them. Or even the days when they were just phones.

You might not have detonated it yet, but that sexy little bit of technology in your pocket is a hand grenade. There will come a time, probably many times, when you will get drunk and have what my friends call ‘an unstable’, when your bartender liquor-handling credentials fail you.

In the old days, you’d have to stagger to a phone box, find 10p, manage to get it in the slot and then remember the number you wanted to call before drunk dialling… a process so convoluted you would likely sober up or pass out half way through.

These days, a couple of clicks on your mobile, and your ill advised ramblings are broadcast to everyone you know.

SMS, Facebook, Twitter, and you are buggered.

The consequences of a drunk dialling can range from the comedic to the tragic. I posted a request for phone calamity stories on Facebook, and this is one of the responses I received:

“I used to run sales for a small removals company. One of our removal guys, while on a job near Frankfurt, used his company mobile to make a drunken and tearful call to his (recently) ex-girlfriend. Unfortunately he passed out, mid-call and she, being brighter than him and somewhat vindictive, didn’t hang up either. He was presented with a bill for £2500 on his return, some 5 times his earnings for the fortnight he’d been away.”

In retrospect, this is a pretty funny story. However for the chap in question, at the time, it must have been horrendous. Indeed, this humble reporter has a long and illustrious career of drunk dialling which once caused the breakup of a very important relationship. I gotta tell you, kicking yourself just doesn’t do it justice.

As a bartender, you probably have something like 500 Facebook friends, give or take. This group is made up of your real mates, industry peers and colleagues, family and customers.

A drunk status update about how your man/woman/boss is a wanker/bitch/tyrant and you have broadcast your madness to literally everyone you know. It can have terrible consequences, personally and professionally.

There’s no defence against this often underestimated peril that I know of… maybe someone will develop an App that measures your blood alcohol before it lets you send a text.

But until that time, be aware, and be warned, unless technology finds an answer… don’t drink and dial.

Thanks to Tim Sewell for the removal driver story.

Not so much a face as a skull, really...

Throughout the UK, rum clubs thrive and Tiki bars are sprouting in cities up and down the country. It is a sector that continues to go from strength to strength, and more than once I have asked myself why this is.

The efforts of evangelists, official and otherwise, have undoubtedly had an effect, as have the marketing campaigns of the brands themselves. But it seems to me that there is something less tangible at work, something that makes rum different to other spirits in the eyes of its drinkers.

It occurred to me that rum is unique because it means different things to different people. It conjures different mental images depending on who is thinking about it. For most punters, gin evokes  memories of G&Ts in the summer and all things English. Vodka is something they mix with coke or put in a Bloody Mary.

But think of rum, and it can relate to a number of (possibly stereotypical) images, and I think it is this that makes it appeal to such a broad slice of the drinking public.

This is in no way an exhaustive list of types of rum or places it is produced, nor is it meant to be a definitive list of the things or movements with which rum has been associated… just a personal description of what I see as the Four Faces of Rum.

1 – The Kon-Tiki Expedition

In 1947, a bunch of lunatic Scandinavians set out to prove that ancient man could have travelled from South America to the Polynesian Islands by raft.

You can't see it from this angle, but there is a whacking great Tiki head painted on the sail

To do this, they built a raft from balsa logs, using only materials and techniques available to the ancients, named it Kon-Tiki and shoved off into the Pacific and let the wind take them.

Expedition leader, Thor Heyerdahl wrote up their ultimately successful adventures in his book, The Kon-Tiki Expedition, and it is a remarkable read.

The crew had all recently fought in WW2, one of them was a even ‘Hero of Telemark’, and the description of their permanent good humour and ability to find something funny in the face of extreme hardship and danger is, to me, the epitome of Tiki.

Walk into a bar like Manchester’s Keko Moku, and that spirit of hospitality, humour and determination to have a good time is very evident.

So much so in fact, that when we asked Jeff ‘Beachbum’ Berry if he though the UK was the new home of Tiki after the Brits trounced an American team at a recent Tiki-off, he replied: “Sounds about right.  You’re an island people too, after all!”

For me then, Tiki is the first face of rum – Hula tunes, crazy shirts, Voodoo mugs, Mai Tais and absolute commitment to having a good time, no matter what. The word ‘mahalo’ says it all really.

2 – The Royal Navy

This is where rum becomes something of an anachronism – on the one hand it is the good-time Tiki spirit, on the other hand it played a significant role in some of our bloodier moments.

To many drinkers, possibly those of a more traditional bent, rum is seen in a similar light as the Spitfire – something from our military past that we should be proud of.

Wonder if Naval recruitment fell when they abolished the tot?

Being an Englishman, I can understand this and do feel a bit of ingrained pride at the thought of Nelson staring down the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar while the tot was distributed to all hands.

Indeed, rum played an instrumental role in Britain’s Naval past, as Commodore Luke van Beek tells us:

“[Rum was] introduced in the 1800s as an alternative to beer. The daily dose for junior ranks (over 18) was one third of a pint of 1 part rum, 2 parts water  (grog) issued at lunchtime and (by regulation) to be consumed immediately. Grog strength was about 70%.

Senior Rates received one ninth of a pint of “neaters” strength about 140% – Officers did not receive the tot.

Storage until the evening, whilst frowned upon was common, [and rum] was a currency used to buy favours and avoid duty.

[The] rum came from Venezula – bought in bulk and stored in 1 gallon jars. Pusser’s Rum allege they use the original formula but no one who drank the original would agree! Pusser’s Rum only came on the scene after 1970 and cashed in on the background.
When the tot finished (1970) the remaining stocks were sold at auction in 2 lots. In both cases a company in Gibraltar bought most of the stock at a knock down price (about £1 a gallon) and resold it at initially £5/gallon and then at about £10.”

For many people then, rum and the Royal Navy are always mentioned in the same breath. This makes traditionalism, courage under fire and the odd bit of extreme violence my Second Face of Rum – “Si vis pacem, pare bellum”.

3 – Caribbean Irie

This, I would imagine, is by far the most prevalent impression of rum amongst the drinking masses – white sand beaches, palm trees, steel drums and heat.

We couldn't do a story about rum without at least one beautiful girl on a beach!

Irie is a Rastafarian word that roughly translates to “everything is all right”, but it means more than that… it describes a feeling of peace, wellbeing and positive emotions.

Or the sensation of laying in a hammock on a beautiful beach, looking out to sea and drinking rum from a coconut shell.

A brand wishing to sell more of its product couldn’t really wish for a better mental association, and this is no doubt one of the reasons why the likes of Appleton and Mount Gay have become so ubiquitous on UK back bars. The efforts of WIRSPA (West Indian Rum and Spirits Producer’s Association) and their True Rum campaign probably haven’t hurt either.

So my Third Face of Rum is simply ‘holidays’ – sitting on a beach somewhere much nicer than the place you live, feeling that everything is irie…

4 – Rum and Revolution

Bacardi is undoubtedly a heavyweight in the rum arena, and for many of today’s bar-goers, it is synonymous with the Mojito and the Mojito is in turn the thing they most associate with rum.

The face that launched a 1000 t-shirts

For me however, if Bacardi was a person, he would be wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt and smoking a Cohiba Esplendido.

Lurking below the surface of Bacardi’s current Mojito-based ad strategy, there is the much more interesting story of a family and their rum supporting the guerrilleros from the war for independence from Spain, right up to Fidel and Che’s formation of modern Cuba.

Tom Gjelten’s book Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba is a great place to start if the subject interests you. It might even change your view that Bacardi’s sole claim to notoriety is the hen party in your bar ordering 16 Mojitos at a time – they also helped fund and certainly fueled more than one revolution against oppression, which you have to admit, is pretty cool.

Thus, my fourth and final Face of Rum is that of young, idealistic men sitting in darkened bars, plotting ways to make their world more just, while getting drunk. Vive la Révolution!

As I said at the beginning, this is just a personal view on the different guises rum can take in the drinker’s psyche, there are no doubt many others. And no doubt many other reasons why rum continues to be one of, if not the most significant spirit sectors in the UK today… if you can think of any others, please share them with us.

A month ago, the rumblings and grumblings about admission charges to the Bar show and seminars were reverberating the length and breadth of Facebook. But once there and propping the Inspirit bar, it seemed that very few people had actually had to pay for a ticket… although getting into the theatres may have been a different story.

Blue Moon... You saw me standing alone (and you still didn't give me a beer)

Speaking to exhibitors on the last day of Bar, it seemed the general feeling was ‘this was ok, but I’ll wait and see how Imbibe goes before I rebook for next year’. I have a feeling most of the visiting bartenders were thinking the same thing when it came to sticking aside £25 for a 2011 ticket.

Fast-forward a couple of weeks and Imbibe rolled around in the familiar surroundings of Earls Court 2. I say familiar because it was a little like going back in time, to the days when Bar was huge and often required visitors to step over a puddle of puke or a passed out kitchen porter.

There was none of that at Imbibe. It was slick, busy and full of what seemed to be the right sort of visitors and exhibitors. And it was nigh on impossible to get a full sized glass of booze anywhere.

If Imbibe’s intent was to show that you can run a drinks-based exhibition without attracting every staggering, drunken student in London, they succeeded (the Tournament pub down the road was full of them however, having been summarily ejected from earls Court).

And yet, as good and as slick as Imbibe was, it felt a little bit ‘sterile’, as if it was on its best behaviour so as not to upset the grown ups (wine clients).

Having said that, full power to them for putting on a good event… a lot of time and effort went into the Imbibe exhibition, and it showed. I wonder what next year will hold, and how Bar will react to the new kid on the block. A monopoly is never good for industry, and ours just got a little more interesting…

On page 42 there’s an article by Nick Wykes, well and truly putting the boot into brand ambassadors. Now I’ll say here and now that I have enormous respect for Nick’s prowess behind the stick, but isn’t that a bit like taking the piss out of the new Chief Secretary of the Treasury for being ginger? A bit too easy?

According to Nick’s Imbibe piece, we should scorn the brand ambassador because he (or she) earns a crust by possessing “the ability to speak out loud, be in possession of a vague insight into the market and have the bearing of a smug twat”.

Spread the love.... with knuckle dusters if required.

Now, I’m not saying there aren’t a few of them out there, but to write off a whole section of the booze industry based on the failings of the few seems wrong to me. A bit like writing off all bartenders because one once made you a dodgy mojito. Or indeed writing off all ‘bar consultants’ for having similar failings to the ambassador.

Earlier this year I returned from a stint editing a bar industry magazine in Australia. The bartender community there uniformly credit, at least in part, the drinks brands and good ambassadors for helping to lift the overall quality of the Aussie cocktail scene in recent years – to such an extent that Melbourne can now have one eye firmly on the ‘Cocktail Capital of the World’ title.

Aussie ‘tenders have none of the cynicism that is sometimes found in the UK. They embrace learning, wherever it might come from, and have a genuine desire to be better at what they do. Same can be said over here too of course, but this feeling of antipathy towards brand ambassadors is a point in case… who cares if a bartender decides to jack in long shifts and backache for a brand gig? Let them get on with it.

Everyone needs to pay the rent, and as long as they try to do a good job and bring something to the trade, full power to them. There’s enough pressure on the bar industry, with recession and government concern about binge drinking taking turns to keep operators awake at night, without causing dissention among the ranks.

Lets spread the love. Go out and hug a brand ambassador today – extra points if you can find a ginger one.