This Internationalist article featured in the June issue of Australian Bartender By Philip Duff Philip…
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Without question, one of the best perks of my job is the travelling to distilleries and bars around the world and interstate to catch up with industry friends and check out the local bar culture. One such a trip to Brisbane recently blew me away as the standard of bartenders and bars are exploding in this great town. You could point the finger to a few great bars like The Bowery, The Lark and more recently Canvas (pictured above) that have set the standard in bar culture and been heavily responsible for training and educating many of the best home grown bartenders.
Check out Part Two of Bartender’s Irish pub, bar and distillery trail. Enjoy!
Don’t be afraid to move away from stocking just the regulation names and typical age statements behind your bar. Have some youthful Speyside malt and a young Islay expression on hand to offer people – it’ll be a revelation for all involved. Build it (or rather stock it) and they will come. Spruik the wonders of the spirit’s character. Tell customers that the whisky is as fresh and sweet as sitting at Port Askaig on a hot May afternoon and there’s just a hint of sea salt from the ocean spray. Tell the something. Get them excited.
“We’re at the bottom end of Melbourne’s CBD,” Delany explained to Bartender when asked about the name. “Peter Iwaniuk owns the site and has operated nightclubs, restaurants and bars in Melbourne for over 30 years,” he continues. “He is a tireless advocate of the hospitality industry.” Delany is the venue’s creative director and has once again brought his flamboyant touch to the space, renovating and reinvigorating the interior to bring Melbourne a seriously serious nightclub.
It’s a bloody long way to get to Ireland and I don’t think they had a longer flight option with Virgin! So do yourself a favour and don’t almost kill yourself trying to fit in a full tour of Ireland and get back to Sydney in just a week. Crazy! With such limited time available I decided to focus my trip on pubs and all things whiskey related, unfortunately giving their iconic castles and fabled racetracks a miss.
Recently I took the Bartender team out to see Anthony Bourdain, former New York chef, come travel writer and TV presenter, who has developed a cult ‘foodie’ following over the last decade. His profile is huge and people love his no bullshit approach to food and to all things hospitality.
By all means this is not the complete ‘who’s who’ of cocktailing royalty, but it is a pretty good selection which showcases a few past – and still present – contemporary craftspeople. who are worthy of being celebrated.
This will not be the first column where I castigate drinks firms for pulling the wool over our eyes (or trying to) but it might be the first one where I point out whose fault it is – yours. A typically entertaining and well-researched piece by Wayne Curtis recently set me thinking. In it, Curtis explained how many of the brands that use ‘heritage’ as a large part of their appeal are actually selling porky pies. It’s been going on for a while and we’re not just talking St. Germain, Chambord and Bols, y’know. Benedictine was actually started by an 19th century millionaire who (even back then) saw that people loved old shit, so he spun a whole story about monks and 1510 etc. Ka-Ching!
Overlooking Moreton Bay with resort-style opulence and a hint of the Caribbean, is the newly completed Mon Komo Hotel. The Mon Komo Hotel is part of the greater Mon Komo development, which comprises residential living, short-stay accommodation and commercial tenancies, and the hotel completes the precinct by offering entertainment and dining options to both its residents and guests.
Like any industry that gleans a profit for the government the production practices of Ireland’s distillers greatly improved throughout the Victorian period. This was a time when science and technology was effecting mans’ life in numerous ways and the global distilling industry benefited from the inventions of tools like of the hydrometer and the saccharometer, both of which allowed for far greater control and accuracy when creating commercial volumes of spirit. Other methods of standardisation, empirical practice and structure also allowed the industry to develop into what we might recognise today.
I can’t remember the last time I heard mean-hearted gossip from a bartender. I’m starting to think that the men and women who hold forth from behind the stick are a breed unto themselves. Sure there are lots of big egos strutting their stuff behind bars, but that’s natural. Bartending is a look-at-me sort of a job, right?