Posts Tagged ‘Dale DeGroff’
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
Dale Degroff and Kathy Casey present the past, present and future of cocktails for The Museum of the American Cocktail
By Francine Cohen
Just because the holidays are over and we’re back to the day to day routine that’s no excuse for gift giving to cease.
In fact, it’s even more reason for it to continue by giving yourself (and any cultural history or booze lore lover in your life) the combined gift of warmth and a night with Dale Degroff as he illuminates the people and places that made liquor lovable.
On Sunday, January 15th join Dale as he presents ON THE TOWN: A Salute to Saloons, Bars, & Legendary Cocktail Palaces! at Clarke’s in Miami Beach (www.clarkesmiamibeach.com)
Dale’s performance in Miami coincides with the Bacardi Classic and if you’re in town you’ll want to slip away, catch this show and return back to old New York and relive saloon style. All proceeds from ticket sales go to benefit The Museum of the American Cocktail. For more information and to purchase tickets go to: (www.kingcocktail.com/onthetown.htm)
For a taste of what’s in store, click here: www.lushlifeproductions.com/video/daledegroff/Dale_Degroff_On_The_Town_Teaser_12_15_11.mov
Another warm night opportunity to raise some money for The Museum of the American Cocktail (and another good reason to slip away during a conference, this one being the CHEERS conference) is a seminar by Bar Chef Kathy Casey who’s featuring culinary cocktails on Sunday, January 22nd at the Museum. www.museumoftheamericancocktail.org/Events/Default.aspx#Seminar87
Get out on the town to support your favorite museum in 2012.
***As an added bonus, for anyone who purchases tickets in advance Jill Degroff has a complimentary copy of her book, Lush Life, for you.
Tags: 21 Club, Clarke's Miami Beach, Dale DeGroff, Diamond Jim Brady, Kathy Casey, King of Cocktails, On the Town, saloon culture, Stork Club, The Museum of the American Cocktail
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Thursday, October 13th, 2011
Ultimate Blast discounted tickets for INSIDE F&B readers
There won’t be a ball dropping, confetti falling, or Ryan Seacrest trying to fill Dick Clark’s shoes as Auld Lang Syne plays in the background but you’ll still want to head to Times Square on Friday night.
Paul Pacult, Dale Degroff, Doug Frost, Steve Olson, Andy Seymour, Dave Wondrich and other industry leaders have provided us with a solid spirits education illuminating topics from pulque to punches and now it’s time to celebrate all we’ve learned. In just 48 short hours the ballroom at the Marriott Marquis will convert into NYC’s most award winning cocktail party and it’s an event no self respecting quaffer will want to miss.
Taste award winning cocktails (some made with Fever-Tree mixers) from Macchu Pisco, new cocktails from Louis Royer Cognac and LiV Vodka, international wines and champagnes that scored high in the Ultimate Beverage Challenge and all sorts of unique bottlings, wine, cocktail and spirit tastings.
The evening doesn’t have to end when you head out the door. Visit with the authors of some spirited cocktail books and take a signed copy home with you. Throughout the evening you’ll have a chance to buy their books and meet and raise a glass with the following authors:
• Ultimate Beverage Challenge/Ultimate Blast founder F. PAUL PACULT – American Still Life: The Jim Beam Story and Making the World’s #1 Bourbon; A Double Scotch: How Chivas Regal and The Glenlivet Became Global Icons
• JILL DEGROFF – Lush Life 2: Portraits from Behind the Bar
• DALE DEGROFF – The Craft of the Cocktail; The Essential Cocktail
• KAREN FOLEY – The American Cocktail: 50 Recipes That Celebrate the Craft of Mixing Drinks from Coast to Coast
• JIM MEEHAN – The PDT Cocktail Book: The Complete Bartender’s Guide from the Celebrated Speakeasy
• DAVID J. REIMER SR. – Micro-Distilleries in the U.S. and Canada: 2011 Edition
• DAVID WONDRICH – Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl; Imbibe!
For a DEEP discount on this evening that promises to be one of the best parties of the fall INSIDE F&B is proud to partner with the Ultimate Blast to offer industry readers a $25 ticket. Go to the list of everything that will be available to be poured.
The facts:
Date: Friday, October 14, 2011
Address: Marriott Marquis Hotel, 1535 Broadway @ 45th St., NYC, Broadway Ballroom
VIP Tickets: $122.50 before 9/15; $175.00 after; 5:30 – 9:30pm
General Tickets: $87.50 before 9/15; $125.00 after; 6:30pm – 9:30pm
Purchase Tickets here: www.ultimate-beverage.com/blast-info
Tags: Andy Seymour, Dale DeGroff, Dave Wondrich, David Reimer, Jill DeGroff, Jim Meehan, LiV Vodka, Louis Royer, Macchu Pisco, Marriott Marquis, Paul Pacult, Romanian Wine, Steve Olson, Ultimate Beverage, Ultimate Blast
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Friday, September 16th, 2011
Lush Life, Portraits from the Bar, Series 2 by Jill Degroff
Story by Sara Gorelick
Lush Life, Portraits from the Bar, has released its second installation of the series, and saloon artist Jill Degroff has done it again; this volume is as captivating as the first.
Lush Life looks at the heart and soul of the industry; the people who make it possible. Degroff’s pages catalog stories from the bar illuminated with sketches bearing a stunning resemblance of the movers, shakers and stirrers the spirits industry has come to know and love. Though you’ve heard their names, communicated with them via email, Skype, or Facebook, and may have been fortunate at one point or another to be seated at their bar its possible you don’t know their backstory and what it took to get them there. Curious? Well, Degroff’s book is the perfect jumping off point.
The book gives you the opportunity to glimpse friends and colleagues through an artist’s eye. The sketches are expertly detailed, catching the expressions that come to mind when we think of the characters we know and love or simply admired from afar. Degroff gives you the ability to throw away any stigmas or preconceived notions about the attentive and often attractive bartender – it is no holds barred from the first story.
The tales on these pages are a reminder of the intricacies of a job which is so much more than mixing booze and slinging shots. Personal stories will cause you to reflect on your own experiences and feel the camaraderie we have all come to know and love. The purpose of the Lush Life collection is strong for Degroff, who knows that it is so important to find time to set it all aside and truly connect with the moment and the person beside you. She says, “The experience of gathering stories for the second edition drove home the lesson that the stories are getting lost now, the art of storytelling is disappearing, with everyone now leading very hectic lives, continuous multitasking and into their gadgets.”
Using no gadget more high tech than a pen or paintbrush, Degroff’s artwork is impeccable; catching features in a most observant way, exaggerating the prominent features while picking up on the slight nuances of a smile or the crease of a forehead. “She works in a three dimensional way, one for the hardest things to work in perspective,” said artist, teacher and art therapist Rosemary Kreder. “You can tell Degroff is a happy person by her drawings and you’d recognize her work. She carries forth a strong gimmick and her pictures make you feel good…this is what art is all about.”
Degroff had limited formal training, and drawing caricatures is a passion she developed after years of doodling in bars and eventually acquired the knack for nailing people. She explains, “I lived in many edgy neighborhoods with bizarre characters. My lower east side tenement featured
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Tags: Dale DeGroff, Jill DeGroff, Lush Life Portraits from the Bar, saloon artist, spirits industry, tenement
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Friday, August 19th, 2011
A Few Of My Favorite Things
By David Ransom
Photo by Charles Steadman
Once again this past July in New Orleans, Mrs. And Mr. Cocktail (aka Ann & Paul Tuennerman) put on what those of us in the business have affectionately come to consider the triathlon of liver survival (drink-filled seminars, drink-filled tasting rooms, and drink-filled dinners and parties… not to mention the obligatory night-ending swing through Old Absinthe House on Rue Bourbon every night just to prove you didn’t expire during the course of the day) that is Tales of the Cocktail (www.talesofthecocktail.com).
Having just completed its ninth year, Tales has grown from a tiny industry-focused event that brought the nation’s top bartenders together for a few days of camaraderie, events, and parties, into a truly international symposium, complete with a “Spirited Awards” program (like the movie industry’s Oscars) that hands out honors to establishments and industry leaders from around the world, and now brings in professionals and consumers from all over the globe to celebrate the world of cocktails in the city that created them.
Rocks Stars and I feel honored to be given the chance to attend each year, and as always, I’m thrilled to be able to share some of my experiences…now that I have recovered enough to be able to write again…
So without further ado, here are a few of my favorite things from this year’s Tales, both good and bad, but really all good, as nothing that includes having a well-crafted drink could ever really be bad… and in no particular order:
Best Hosts Under Pressure: Ann & Paul Tuennerman. Nine years into it, Tales could probably have run itself, but Ann and Paul were everywhere. Every event. Every day. Every night. What amazes me about this is that Paul was recovering from a health scare and had just spent time in the hospital. I have to tip my hat to these two intrepid souls for not staying in the background and recuperating at home while “their baby” was staged. Quite to the contrary, they were all over the place from Tuesday’s Media Welcome Party at Arnaud’s French 75 bar (beautifully run by Chris Hannah, one of NOLA’s finest drinks-smiths – www.arnaudsrestaurant.com),to the final Sunday Brunch with Mr. & Mrs. Cocktail, and everywhere in between. I even ran into Paul solo, visibly tired yet surely on the mend, at the Suntory Suite (www.suntory.com) one afternoon where we chatted on the balcony overlooking Bourbon Street while enjoying a glass of Japan’s finest single malt.
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Tags: Andrews Sisters, Ann Tuennerman, Arnauds, Audrey Saunders, Barsol, Beefeater Gin, Board of Trade, Bon Vivants, Bourbon Street, Campari, Campo de Encanto, Dale DeGroff, Dave Arnold, Dave Wondrich, Dushan Zaric, Employees Only, Fancy Pants, French Culinary Institute, Frenchman Street, Grey Goose, Jason Kosmas, Jill DeGroff, Josh Harris, Julie Reiner, Latrobe's on Royal, Lu Brow, Macchu Pisco, mezcal, Mr. and Mrs. Cocktail, New Orleans, Paul Tuennerman, Pernod Ricard, Pig & Punch, Pisco O, Ramos Gin Fizz, Robert Hess, Ron Cooper, Rosie the Riveter, Royal Sonesta New Orleans, Russian Standard Vodka, Sailor Jerry, Scott Baird, Shawn Kelley, Suntory, Tales of the Cocktail, The Glenlivet, Tobin Ellis, Tony Abou Ganim, William Grant, WWII Museum, Zu Bison Grass Vodka
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Thursday, July 21st, 2011
Ultimate Beverage Challenge awards double as a sales tool
By Francine Cohen
All photos by Daniel Krieger
WINNING! It’s not just Charlie Sheen’s popular catch phrase (or Giuseppe Gonzalez’s favorite too, if his Facebook page is any indication), but it’s why you enter your brand in competitions. For the guts and the glory. For the admiration from your peers, appreciation from consumers, attention at Tales of the Cocktail (www.talesofthecocktail.com) and a boost in sales. But really, how much glory is there in being the brand that won the double secret probation double gold medal? Why do competitions need “double” medals? One in each category is good enough for the Olympics; and it should be enough for spirit competitions.
That, in part, is why Paul Pacult and his band of merry mixology experts including Jacques Bezuidenhout, Dale DeGroff, Jim Meehan, Gaz Regan, Steve Olson, Audrey Saunders, Marcos Tello, David Wondrich, and more boldfaced names you know, love and respect, were hard at work judging cocktails and the spirits that go into them this past spring. In its second year, the Ultimate Beverage Challenge (aka UBC, actually a series of three competitions: Ultimate Spirits, Ultimate Cocktails, Ultimate Wine) www.ultimate-beverage.com, continues to lead the way towards enlightened spirits recommendations and turns the competition game on its head. Pacult comments, “I just think it’s simple. When you put together the best mixology, the best cocktailians in the world, authors, journalists, bartenders, and consultants then we set up a situation where not only do we have the leading efforts, we have the methodology. And those two things bring credibility.”
And that credibility, and clarity, is so important. Particularly when you find yourself somewhere like the Publix grocery store on Glades Road in Boca Raton, Florida, awash in a sea of wines and spirits, many of which are proudly displaying neck tags touting their many medals won from some unknown judging body. What do those medals really mean? Is the tennis playing soccer mom who lives in the gated community down the road going to understand what those medals stand for? And why are they valid? Who knows.
It’s a question for the ages. And the skeptical. Pacult notes, “The fact that we don’t give medals really works in our favor. We’re differentiating ourselves from just about all other competitions which issue medals like peanuts at the circus.
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Tags: Andy Seymour, Chairman's Trophy, Dale DeGroff, Doug Frost, Paul Pacult, Sean Lundford, Steve Olson, Ultimate Beverage Challenge, Ultimate Cocktail Challenge, Ultimate Spirits Challenge
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Monday, October 11th, 2010
Julie Reiner
By David Ransom
Julie Reiner’s favorite spirit is not what you probably think it is. As she’s a native of Hawaii, one would think that Julie’s dream drink would include exotic ingredients like pineapple, star fruit, and rum, and inspire visions of far off places like the north shore of Kauai or the white sand beaches of Fiji. However, while she does show a deft hand at creating masterful libations reminiscent of Gauguin’s South Pacific, her personal go-to drink is far more mainland than that. But rather than let the cat out of the bag in my own words, I think it may be best to let Julie tell us in hers…later.
As one of the world’s most accomplished and respected mixologists, Julie has helped define an industry, and along the way, built herself a mini empire of trendsetting cocktail bars that have been emulated countless times around the world. Strange as it may seem, while growing up the last thing Julie ever thought was that she’d end up in the business she’s in, or that she’d play such a major role in pioneering what we now call the world’s “cocktail culture.” Yet that’s what she’s done, and it may have been inadvertently due to the fact that she gets bored easily.
Spend some time with her, and one almost immediately notices that Julie has a somewhat restless spirit, visibly apparent in her mannerisms and constant need to out-do her last success and not rest on her laurels. So, it may not be such a stretch to say that boredom played a key role in making her who she is today, as lack of inspiration invariably leads one to want to change a situation to the way they feel it should be. And this is certainly true in Julie.
Like many young people first starting out in the job world, she was first drawn to the hospitality industry for the benefits it offered; like flexible hours, excitement, and quick money. Her first job, as a cocktail waitress at the Hotrod Café on Honolulu’s famed Waikiki Beach, was the perfect vehicle for this, and she did well there, but never dreamed of actually pursuing it as a career path. However, life has a strange way of dictating to us what we are born to do; and we are powerless to change it, no matter how hard we try. Calvin called it predestination, Aristotle and Taylor called it fatalism, and luckily for us, Julie’s experience at Hotrod Café lit an internal spark that remained burning no matter how hard she tried to extinguish it. And it kept coming back to life until she finally gave in and let it blaze the path to her future.
After the Hotrod Café, college was in her immediate future and, having spent her formative years on Oahu, and feeling there was lots more world to see, she decided to go to school as far from Hawaii
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Tags: Audrey Saunders, bourbon, Clover Club, Dale DeGroff, Flatiron Lounge, Julie Reiner, Lani Kai, Pegu Club
Posted in Rocks Stars | 10 Comments »
Friday, July 30th, 2010
By David Ransom
Photo courtesy of Tales of the Cocktail
Rules are made to be broken, and while Rocks Stars, originally conceived as a profile column focusing on “Movers and Shakers” in the sprits industry, will for all intents and purposes remain that way, from time to time I may just throw in some thoughts on experiences I have along the spirits trail that I find need some play.
To that effect, I would like to bang a few keys on the keyboard, updating you on this year’s 8th Annual Tales of the Cocktail conference held in New Orleans this past hot and steamy week, by bringing to light what I consider to be the week’s top five events:
Here we go, in no particular order, except the last one:
5. Wednesday evening’s Beefeater Welcome party. Held in the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, This “welcome party” had it all: Alice in Wonderland characters floating through the room, trapeze artists floating through the air, and some beautiful cocktails with the “always classic” Beefeater gin, made by some of the world’s great bartenders, like Jamie Gordon and Audrey Saunders, while others, like Tony Abou-Ganim and Dale DeGroff roamed the room. A great way to kick into the week’s festivities.
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Tags: Antonia Fattizzi, Audrey Saunders, Bartender's Breakfast, Beefeater, Bon Vivants, Charlotte Voisey, Cochon, Dale DeGroff, Donald Link, Jennifer Mitchell Photography, Plymouth, Rocks Stars, Tales of the Cocktail, Tony Abou Ganim, William Grant
Posted in Columns, Rocks Stars | 7 Comments »
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Insights into becoming a happier and healthier bartender
By Francine Cohen
You’ve copiously studied recipes from the patron saint of cocktail recipes, Jerry Thomas ; Tony Abou-Ganim, Dale DeGroff, Doug Frost, Steve Olson, Paul Pacult, Julie Reiner, Audrey Saunders, Andy Seymour, and Dave Wondrich, have taught you valuable lessons in technique, ingredients, and tasting and now, at Tales of the Cocktail 2011 it is time to learn how to become the master of your own domain.
This seminar asks: Ever wonder how some nights when you worked so hard – you were at the end of the night physically tired but in good spirits and appeared not to have lost a lot of energy? Remember also the nights when at the end you were not only physically tired and exhausted but also emotionally drained and “heavy?” If you can answer “yes”, even if it’s just for one shift, then you need to be in this room on Saturday afternoon.
Join Dushan Zaric (Employees Only www.employeesonlynyc.com, Macao Trading Company www.macaonyc.com) and Aisha Sharpe (Contemporary Cocktails www.contemporarycocktailsinc.com) for a journey into yourself that results in better bartending. And a better, more peaceful, productive, and profitable you that you’ll get to after understanding how to look at service as an art, maintain balance and sense of self and, essentially, break down the bartender.
Zaric explains why he’s bringing this seminar to Tales after offering it to bartenders around the world. He says, “There are a lot of bartenders who are very well versed in mixing cocktails, knows history, when it comes to service and help themselves that’s where they are not well equipped, and don’t have the tools.”
He continues, “I’m doing this to make people’s lives easier. It breaks my heart to see
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Tags: Aisha Sharpe, Andy Seymour, Audrey Saunders, Dale DeGroff, Dave Wondrich, Doug Frost, Dushan Zaric, Julie Reiner, Paul Pacult, Steve Olson, Tony Abou Ganim, Wisdom behind the bar
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