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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Earlier this week, the National Post published a story entitled “Are you going to drink that tequila or just talk about it?”, which has prompted more than a little bit of discussion within the Canadian bartending community. The article’s author talks about suffering through a tequila tasting in Toronto, claiming that the hosts spend too much time talking about how the spirits are made, and not nearly enough time shooting them back. Canadians, he claims, don’t care to learn more about what they’re drinking or about what makes it superior – they want to just skip to the shot.

He goes on to describe the bartender as “hapless”, and the discouragement to the profession has left more than a few bartenders feeling more than a little upset, but does he raise a good point? How many extraordinary bars or bartenders have you heard of within Canada? Sure there are a few Canadian headliners, but compare that to the news coming out of New York, or San Fransisco, we don’t even come close to the same notoriety.

Bartending in Canada can be significantly more difficult than in other parts of the world, for many different reasons — the most significant of these reasons being our government. Unlike New York State, whose Liquor Authority, which deals with license issuing, and Liquor Store Association, which oversees liquor retailers, each Canadian province has their own, government-run liquor store. What this means to bars and bartenders is that any product introduced to Ontario is subject to the approval of the Ontario government. The result of this is a market dominated by the brands with the biggest budgets, leaving little room for the smaller spirit and liqueur companies to make headway.

How long have Domaine de Canton and St. Germain cocktails and competitions been making news across the United States now? We still don’t have those products here in Ontario. The only reason I have them, along with products like Cherry Heering, G’Vine Gin, and Maraschino Liqueur is that I smuggled them back into Canada when I was at Tales of the Cocktail this summer.

With that said, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) is the single-largest purchaser of wine and spirits in the entire world.. yet our variety and our quality offerings are minimal. Hell, the only spirit-based bitters you can purchase in Canada right now are still simply Angostura Aromatic. Head on over to Liquid Revolution and ask Shawn Soole about the nightmare he’s had trying to set up “House of Bitters” as a Canadian bitters supplier.

So what does it take to succeed as a bartender, especially in Canada? A whole hell of a lot of passion, and a persistence and commitment to the craft that’s sure to drive everyone around you nuts. Anyone can make drinks – it takes very, very little to stand behind the bar and pour wine, beer, and rum and cokes all night. To take that step beyond, requires more than a head full of drink recipes, and a cocktail shaker at hand. How you progress beyond that point depends directly on what the National Post suggests Canadians don’t do – care about what you drink.

Help us prove them wrong.

In case you missed the post on my facebook profile, here’s a copy of my response to the editor of the National Post.
My name is Nick Nemeth, and I’m an incredibly passionate bartender from Niagara Falls, Ontario. Recently, one of my peers from New York City pointed out one of your articles that, even now, I find difficult to craft the appropriate response to.

Besides myself, across Canada there are an ever-growing number of bartenders building a career out of providing exemplary service and quality cocktails to our guests. With that said, there are a good number of us that feel Adam McDowell was phenomenally out of touch with his article discussing a recent tequila tasting, published in the “Happy Hour” section of your newspaper…. See More

Speaking as one of the so-called “hapless” bartenders that Mr. McDowell refers to, I find it incredibly discouraging to think that someone in an influentially significant position like his would talk down about a career that so many of us are working so hard to elevate.

The “great” cocktail cities like New York, San Fransisco, and London (among others) cast a fairly large shadow on the beverage industry, often eclipsing the talent of many equally talented Canadian bartenders. Pair that with the legal red tape and limitations our government-run liquor stores impart on us, and it’s very difficult for an upstanding Canadian bartender to succeed.

Be that as it may, there are a rapidly growing group of professionals across Canada who have built careers out of tending bar. We’ve found much more within that glass of tequila than simply a shot to suck back, and there are a good number of us who are baffled as to how a beverage writer could be so ignorant to the quality cocktail culture flourishing around him.

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For those of you that visit Cocktails and Cordials regularly, you’ve likely noticed a lack of recent updates on both the blog and on twitter, and I do want to apologize for that. The tardiness on my part has been the result of more than a month’s worth of bar preparation for the St. Catharines, Ontario location for Johnny Rocco’s Italian Grill, which we will be opening on Monday, December 7th.

In taking on the role and responsibilities associated with the title of “Bar Manager” earlier this year, I was more than a little hesitant. A move to management for any bartender is an almost guaranteed pay cut, but depending on how you spend your time, you may just be able to leverage your role to make both you and your bar substantially more money. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I’m going to share the experience I’ve had in setting up our St. Catharines location, and show you how to approach opening your own bar.

If you have any questions, I’d love to spend some time answering them here on the website. Send an email to nick@cocktailsandcordials.com, and I’d be more than happy to help.

For now, I leave you with Part 1: The Cost of Going Fresh. Interested in making the big switch from pre-mix to fresh cocktails? Click here to read why you can’t afford not to.

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As the use of popular tools like Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites becomes increasingly prevalent, bars, bartenders, spirit makers, and cocktail enthusiasts are using the unique opportunities social media provides to leverage their business, and with few exceptions, the list of people and companies I follow on Twitter are almost exclusively cocktail related. While I finish preparing my article on the bartender’s use of social media tools, here’s a list of 25 bartenders you need to follow, who use their Twitter accounts to communicate on a regular basis.

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Every year, Niagara’s Pulse Magazine does an annual reader’s survey of the best in Food and Drink in southern Ontario. For 2009, both myself and Johnny Rocco’s were very fortunate to receive the top honours in a number of different categories, winning seven awards total. Here’s how we did.

Gold: Best Bartender
Nick Nemeth
Gold: Best Cocktail
Silver: Best Bloody Caesar

Gold: Best Italian Food
Gold: Best Pasta
Gold: Best Server
Alicia Esposito
Gold: Best Overrall Service

Overrall, it’s going to be quite the busy week for me with media appearances. I recently sat down with the Niagara Falls Review, talking quality cocktails and my recent trip to Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans. This article should be in print for the paper’s Saturday, July 18th issue. Also, my beer and spirit cocktail article is set to appear in the Summer issue of Taps, Canada’s Beer Magazine, hitting newstands sometime next week. I’ll keep Cocktails and Cordials up to date as I receive each article.

Thank you so much to everyone who voted, I can’t begin to tell you how much it means to me.

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