While I have a few original gin cocktails to showcase here soon, I was recently forwarded a few from Hendricks in the spirit of the national drinking holiday. While most will opt for Guinness and Irish Whiskey, why not throw a little gin into the mix? Have any of your own St. Patrick’s Day themed cocktails? Please submit them below!

The Silent Symphony
Sweet, sour, and definitely green, this cocktail will help launch the drinker into the St. Paddy’s celebration.

1.75 oz Hendrick’s Gin
1.5 inch piece of half shaved cucumber
Half a kiwi muddled, with a tsp of sugar
0.75 oz fresh lime juice
2 pinches of salt
1 pinch black pepper
½ oz sweet and sour (equal parts fresh lemon, lime and sugar syrup), spiced with a pinch of wasabi

Muddle and stir all ingredients together in a mixing glass. Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with a wheel of kiwi or cucumber.

Mr. Pickles
For something really unusual, try Mr. Pickles. The mixture of Chartreuse and honey may elicit a true Irish jig!

2 oz Hendrick’s Gin
0.5 oz Honey
1 tsp Green Chartreuse
1 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar

Ice and stir well into a chilled glass (a coupe is suggested). Garnish with a thin slice of black radish and if you really want to kick things up a notch, include a demitasse spoon with a little caviar on it.

In the spirit of Hendrick’s, just a friendly reminder that the next round of Iron Bartender, sponsored by Hendrick’s Gin, takes place on Tuesday, March 23rd at Johnny Rocco’s St. Catharines. Competing that night will be bartenders Wes Galloway (Black Beans Steakhouse and Lounge, Port Hope), and Ashley Gendron (Johnny Rocco’s Italian Grill, St. Catharines)

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If you’re familiar with Cocktails and Cordials, it’s not likely to come as a surprise to you that I’m a huge fan of G’Vine gin, particularily their “Nouaison” expression. Late last year, I added a few posts about their educational contest, the G’Vine Gin Connoisseur’s program (view the posts here and here), headed up by Philip Duff.

The competition strove to not only test gin-inclined bartenders, but also to educate on things like gin history, production, cocktails, marketing, and of course, the G’Vine brand. After the first round of education received such an overwhelming response, with more than 300 participating bartenders worldwide, the initial deadlines were extended. That gave G’Vine the opportunity to bring in one of the forth-most authorities on gin: Gary Regan.

Well, it appears that G’Vine has finished marking the first round of entries, and they’ve selected my 17 page submission as the first one to be featured! To see my submission, along with comments and critiques from Gary Regan (last page if you want to skip to it), click the following link:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27055177/Gin-Marketing-in-the-21st-Century-Defining-a-Brand-Through-Marketing-by-Nick-Nemeth-Canada-and-Comments-by-Gary-Regan

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In January of 2009, Johnny Rocco’s launched the first annual Iron Chef Niagara event, pitting 8 local chefs against each other, in a series of events supporting a handful of local children’s charities. In the end, we were able to raise nearly $23,000. Based on the success of last year’s events, we thought it would only be fitting to expand the focus to the bar as well.

Iron Bartender kicked off this past Tuesday, February 23 with our first event sponsored by El Jimador tequila. Our featured bartenders were commissioned to created two El Jimador cocktails, the first featuring the spirit and any additional ingredients they wanted. The second cocktail was done blackbox style, with our bartenders limited to El Jimador and the following ingredients.

I was joined by local bartender Sonia Fillion, and in the end, a random selection of judges deemed my ‘Strawberry Passion Awareness’ (I know, I lost points on originality) cocktail — a blend of El Jimador, Galliano, Nutella, Lime, Strawberry, and simple syrup, the winner. I’m not quite sure how I feel about winning my own cocktail competition, but it was a ton of fun.

The next night, at our Iron Bartender event at Johnny Rocco’s Niagara Falls, we were joined by bartenders Troy Dowhaniuk (Jack Astor’s Hamilton) and Shawn Murphy (Artisanal Palate Catering) in an event sponsored by Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum. Same format, same group of random ingredients, but this pairing of bartenders gave us much different results, with a much more creative use of the mystery flavours. The voting was very close, but in the end, Troy’s drink was declared the winner. His cocktail, “Grandpa Jack’s Cider” combined Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum, Galliano, peach juice, cinnamon, and chai tea. Troy scored extra points on presentation, with his rim of cinnamon and blackberry jam.

Troy will move on to compete in the semi-finals in St. Catharines on April 27th (sponsored by Campari), and I will move on to the Niagara Falls event on the following day (sponsored by Sarpa di Poli Grappa).
The next round of competition will be March 23rd and 24th with events sponsored by Hendrick’s Gin, and Woodford Reserve bourbon, respectively.

Thank you so much to everyone who came out, and to the sponsors who have helped us make this event happen!

To see the rest of the photos, click here.

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Whether you’re Canadian or not, it’s tough to ignore the Olympic craze surrounding us all. Tune into ‘The Straight Pour’, hosted by Paul and Ann Tuennermann, organizers of Tales of the Cocktail, tomorrow morning for some insight from myself and Darcy O’Neil on what impact the Olympics have had on Canadian bars and bartenders.

In addition, you’ll get a sneak peek as to what you can expect from this year’s Tales of the Cocktail event – I’ll be hosting a seminar entitled “Social Media: Creating Cocktail Legends” alongside Brian Rea and Camper English, and Darcy has a few, much more intelligent, seminars he’ll be presenting as well.

The show starts at 11AM EST, and you can tune in at http://www.wistradio.com. And yes, this mean’s that the downtime around Cocktails and Cordials is finally over.

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Should you ever make it to my office, it becomes apparent very quickly that I’m a very unorganized person. In an effort to remedy this, you can often find the outside of my computer laden with an assortment of Post-It Note reminders reminding me to do everything from paying bills, to emails I need to send, or in the case of the only permanent Post-It.. to update my website a minimum of three times per week.

At the slowest of times, that can be a serious challenge. To keep up with the likes of Camper English’s Alcademics, or fellow Canadian Darcy O’Neil, and his Fix the Pumps project, can be an uphill battle for sure — throw in the hundreds of other full time cocktail blogs spanning the internet, and Cocktails and Cordials quickly falls to the wayside.

But my greatest challenge, in my opinion, is the cause of an advantage that most cocktail bloggers have neglected — I’m a full time bartender and Bar Manager here in Niagara Falls. Why don’t you see this website updated nearly as often as the others? I’m so incredibly lucky to spend 60 hours per week in a bar still, 40 or so of those hours being behind the wood full time. Over the course of the past few weeks my time for Cocktails and Cordials has drastically declined, and I’m only just beginning to find more time to devote to online cocktails.

What’s taking up my time now? After an exhausting few months of setbacks, delays, and disheartening slowdowns with construction, we are getting very close to launching the second bar and restaurant for Johnny Rocco’s Italian Grill (if you’re American.. Carabba’s is a very similar concept) here in St. Catharines, Ontario. The next few days will be devoted to unpacking countless cases of glassware, and receiving a $50K wine and liquor order, and I couldn’t be more excited.

I’m going to do my best to keep you posted with our progress, but for the time being.. thank you so much for your patience. I have plenty of very exciting news to share with you over the next couple of weeks, so please stay tuned!

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