Tales of the Cocktail

By Ted Wright July 17, 2008

A very good day to you all from a hung over Hotel Monteleone. Yep that’s right the whole hotel is hung over because when you mix in 100+ of the finest bartenders in the world with 500+ spirits producers and highly motivated civilians you are going to have some drinking going on.

Ingredients

Just from the first day of Tales we have a whole list of ingredients that we are going to start working into our house cocktail and share with our clients after we have been introduced/reintroduced to them. Algerian honey, toasted pumpkin seeds, muddled blueberries and egg whites lead this list.

Information

We will share lessons learned in separate postings over the next month. For those of you who want to get a jump on things we took extensive notes at these presentations:

Eric Schmidt and his discussion of the data behind market trends

Ryan Magarian and his “drinks templates” idea behind bartender education

Jennifer Baum and her revelations of what it takes to create great beverage PR

Food

Restaurants in NOLA still kick ass. Excellent meals at Couchon and Jacques Imos since we have been here have been highlights. Breakfast at Mother’s yesterday morning was a lovely hybrid of summer camp cuisine and Brennan’s.

WOMM

It is always great to attend these conferences and see those producers that are using WOMM as their means to drive volume growth. When WOMM is the marketing focus of a company it allows (demands?) that they focus on the excellence of their product and the experience that surrounds it. You see that clearly in evidence with the brands here that are growing quickly. Those that still choose to rely on beautiful print ads, the same old on premise programming and fancy trinkets to get their message across were less well received at Tales and have much lower rates of growth.

Big thanks the Ann and her staff for putting on a great event. At every turn you can see the work that has been put into making sure every detail comes off flawlessly.