A witch with which to sip By Gary Regan I’ve a witch living not too…
Tag: another
Living in today’s fast-paced, online world when something is trendy it spreads like the plague. Take the fashion industry, for example, one day an outfit is on the catwalk, it’s copied and sold everywhere, and a few weeks later everyone is wearing it.
Andy Griffiths, one time bar manager at Melbourne’s award winning Cookie, has finally given us the inside word on what he has been up to since giving up his post last year. Griffiths has been busy planning the bar for Mesa Verde a new venue opening in Melbourne next month.
The Perth bar scene is alive and well it seems, with a bit of musical bartender chairs being played. It appears that Luxe bar is ground zero for a lot of this too. Not only is owner Andy Freeman setting up a new bar, called The Varnish (as we reported in October’s Bartender) but other Luxe alumni are making moves too.
Over the past few months two prominent Melbourne bars have reached noteworthy milestones and I wanted to take a few minutes to congratulate them on their achievements. First up ,we see one of Australia’s founding modern-day cocktail bars, The Gin Palace, celebrate an amazing 15 years of operation. Most people should be well aware of this Melbourne institution and the man behind it Mr. Vernon Chalker.
With just two years bartending under her belt, Katherine placed an amazing third in the Bartender of the Year competition this year. Find out more about her meteoric rise and her other interests, or catch her at the Bowery.
In 1682, rum was big business in the American colonies. So much so that, when faced with the imminent arrival of a “hundred or more” heretic Quakers, Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather thought he could sell them for rum. “Much spoil can be made by selling the whole lot to Barbadoes [sic],” he wrote, “where slaves fetch good prices in rum and sugar”. Such was the appeal of rum – the New England colonists were crazy for it.
The Australian Bartender magazine Bartender of the Year Competition, sponsored by Ketel One, is a bartending challenge that always throws up a few surprises. 2012 proved to be no exception with the calibre of bartenders involved proving to be outstandingly high.
It used to be a sterile office space all one shade of white – white walls, white ceilings, fluorescent office light. The very definition of bland, monochrome and uniform. But this space, now home to Udaberri, is much more than that: deep warm-toned timber floors, below exposed ceilings and brick wall, while chesterfield lounges and communal tables provide space to relax.
We caught up with the Shady Pines and Baxter Inn lads for their pearls of wisdom, like this gem: “No crumb in the no-crumb zone.” Read on…
“As long as you didn’t have a nip or two of absinthe it was quite fine to drink five litres of wine a day, thank you very much.”
“Stronger than its kissing cousin the Sidecar and almost as smooth, though without the Sidecar’s peculiar magic” – David Wondrich