Is there anything gaz regan wouldn’t do to get attention?

Would getting lung cancer, and getting rid of it while Tales was going on sound like him?

Gaz and I have known each other and been friends since the 1990s. More recently, we have become business associates in matters pertaining to the role of bartenders in brand building and business development. Together we launched Worldwide Bartender Database 

We speak often and a short while ago he told me that during the course of a medical exam, the doctors found a spot on his lung that needed to be removed.

I freaked out.  But he was particularly and unusually calm about the matter.

Got me to thinking… was this real? Was he pulling my leg? Or was he up to his old, attention getting tricks.

Now, before you think me cold and heartless, let’s examine Mr. Regan’s shenanigans:

In 2001 he started Cocktails in the Country, a bartending course believed to be the only bartending program in NY that used real spirits, as opposed to colored water.

By 2007 Jim Meehan, Dave Kaplan, Don Lee, H. Joseph Ehrmann, Jacques Bezuidenhout, Jamie Boudreau, Jared Brown, Anistatia Miller, Joaquin Simo, Jonathan Pogash, Naren Young, Philip Ward, Robert Hess, Sammy Ross, Toby Cecchini, Toby Maloney, and Willy Shine, among many others had all taken the CitC course.

In 2008 he started wearing eye-liner. (That’s right… among other reasons, he claimed it helped him make the point with bartenders that eye-contact with customers across the bar was an important element of ‘mindful bartending.’)

In 2009 he changed his name so he, like Prince, could be known as “The Bartender Formally Known as . . .”

In 2010 he started the Finger-Stirred Negroni Craze, which captured the world’s attention. Not long after, he had his finger cast in stainless steel and made into a stirrer.

And now, in order to create a buzz, gaz didn’t go to Tales of the Cocktail this year. Choosing instead to have half of his left lung ripped out.

So, you’ll forgive me if I was a tad skeptical.

“Well, in all truth” says gaz, “I didn’t have much of a choice in this one cos, according to my doctors I had a tiny pea-size lump of very aggressive cancer in there, but I couldn’t help but make a big deal of it, cos I’m known for never missing a chance to shock the world.”

Truth of the matter is that, after his operation, tests were performed, and gaz has been declared to be totally cancer free, and he’ll be out on the road again after he spends a couple of weeks being spoiled rotten by Amy his wife.

“I have to get back out there to make the money I missed out on by pulling this particular stunt,” says gaz, “So, if you doubt, for a second, that a two-time cancer survivor with hardly a tooth in his head, only half of a tongue and half of one of his lungs is up to the task, get in touch with me at The Worldwide Bartender Database  and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

In truth folks, gaz has been laid up and concerned but now that he’s in the clear, this blog post was his inspiration. It’s his way of… well… back to being gaz regan.

All I can say is: Twasn’t my fault, Mum… He put me up to it.

So, forgive us if we had a bit of fun at f**ken cancer’s expense.

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Why is it called a “cocktail?”

The mystery is solved — sort of

Ever wonder why it’s called a cocktail? I have, and I set out to learn the answer. So, I checked with Gary (Gaz) Regan, my friend and business associate and, a fountainhead of information about all sorts of booze business matters. He has written 18 books on the business including, 101 best new Cocktails, The Bartender’s Gin Compendium, and The Joy of Mixology.

 It turns out that in the new revised and updated edition of The Joy of Mixology, Gaz addresses this question at the outset of this amazing book, which is full of anecdotes, stories, and cocktail recipes. With his permission here are some excerpts on “How Did a Cocktail Come to be called a Cocktail?

On May 13, 1806, the Balance and Columbian Repository of Hudson, New York, answered a reader’s query as to the nature of a cocktail: “Cocktail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called a bittered sling.” The cocktail had been born, it had been defined, and yet it couldn’t have been very well known by the general populace, or the newspaper wouldn’t have considered it a fit topic for elucidation.

Where does the word cocktail come from? There are many answers to that question, and none is really satisfactory. One particular favorite story of mine, though, comes from The Booze Reader: A Soggy Saga of a Man in His Cups, by George Bishop: “The word itself stems from the English cock-tail which, in the middle 1800s, referred to a woman of easy virtue who was considered desirable but impure. The word was imported by expatriate Englishmen and applied derogatorily to the newly acquired American habit of bastardizing good British Gin with foreign matter, including ice. The disappearance of the hyphen coincided with the general acceptance of the word and its re-exportation back to England in its present meaning.” Of course, this can’t be true since the word was applied to a drink before the middle 1800s, but it’s entertaining nonetheless, and the definition of “desirable but impure” fits cocktails to a tee.

A delightful story, published in 1936 in the Bartender, a British publication, details how English sailors of “many years ago” were served mixed drinks in a Mexican tavern. The drinks were stirred with “the fine, slender and smooth root of a plant which owing to its shape was called Cola de Gallo, which in English means ‘Cock’s tail.’” The story goes on to say that the sailors made the name popular in England, and from there the word made its way to America.

Another Mexican tale about the etymology of cocktail—again, dated “many years ago”—concerns Xoc-tl (transliterated as Xochitl and Coctel in different accounts), the daughter of a Mexican king, who served drinks to visiting American officers. The Americans honored her by calling the drinks cocktails—the closest they could come to pronouncing her name. And one more south-of-the-border explanation for the word can be found in Made in America, by Bill Bryson, who explains that in the Krio language, spoken in Sierra Leone, a scorpion is called a kaktel. Could it be that the sting in the cocktail is related to the sting in the scorpion’s tail? It’s doubtful at best.

One of the most popular tales told about the first drinks known as cocktails concerns a tavern keeper by the name of Betsy Flanagan, who in 1779 served French soldiers drinks garnished with feathers she had plucked from a neighbor’s roosters. The soldiers toasted her by shouting, “Vive le cocktail!” William Grimes, however, points out in his book Straight Up or On the Rocks: The Story of the American Cocktail that Flanagan was a fictional character who appeared in The Spy, by James Fenimore Cooper. He also notes that the book “relied on oral testimony of Revolutionary War veterans,” so although it’s possible that the tale has some merit, it’s a very unsatisfactory explanation.

A fairly plausible narrative on this subject can be found in Famous New Orleans Drinks & How to Mix ’em, by Stanley Clisby Arthur, first published in 1937. Arthur tells the story of Antoine Amedie Peychaud, a French refugee from San Domingo who settled in New Orleans in 1793. Peychaud was an apothecary who opened his own business, where, among other things, he made his own bitters, Peychaud’s, a concoction still available today. He created a stomach remedy by mixing his bitters with brandy in an eggcup—a vessel known to him in his native tongue as a coquetier. Presumably not all Peychaud’s customers spoke French, and it’s quite possible that the word, pronounced coh-KET-yay, could have been corrupted into cocktail. However, according to the Sazerac Company, the present-day producers of Peychaud’s bitters, the apothecary didn’t open until 1838, so there’s yet another explanation that doesn’t work.

Another theory has it that in England, horses of mixed blood had their tails docked to signify their lack of breeding, and were known as “cocktailed” horses, but since I first wrote that, the term has been clarified. David Wondrich, cocktail historian extraordinaire, has concluded that the word’s origins did indeed involve horses and their tails, but with a difference: “cocktail,” he found, was a bit of ginger or cayenne pepper that crooked horse dealers would put into tired old horses’ bums to make them cock their tails up and act a little more lively than usual.

Gary (gaz) Regan

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So, there you have it… five possible explanations of the origin of the word cocktail.

I don’t know about you but I’m going with the last one, but I much prefer “down the hatch” than “bottoms up.”

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Behind the Stick: The Changing Bartender

the finishing touch

From a job to a career

The last 30 years in the booze business has seen fundamental shifts in all aspects. The industry has consolidated at all levels: manufacturer (supplier), distributor, and retailer. Consumer preferences have gone from whiskies to vodkas and back to whiskies. Mass-produced brands are losing ground to craft and micro distillers. The cocktail has reemerged with a vengeance.

Consider the arguably most important person in the drinks business chain, the influencer, the gatekeeper of choice – the bartender. In my view, there are profound shifts in motivation and aspiration that has changed the nature of bartending and the people who work that craft.

My friend Gaz Regan, in a recent interview with Tales of the Cocktail, summed it up nicely when asked about the changes affecting bartending. He points out that, so far as he is concerned, the changes began about ten years ago. “Bartending prior to that was a part-time job. Something you did until you got a real job.”

He went on to add:

“What happened was, the spirits companies began to recognize the value of bartenders. They started having [drink] competitions with big prizes, and investing money in bartenders. Giving bartenders jobs as brand ambassadors followed that. And, in return, the bartenders gave the spirits companies the exposure that they were looking for. So that’s been a fabulous marriage. I get asked sometimes, is this all going to go away? My answer is, not as long as the spirits companies are making money.”

In the past…

Some of my theatre friends have an interesting expression. “A bartender is an actor that doesn’t want to become a writer.” That’s the way it was, once upon a time.

To oversimplify, there were some basic and simple motivations. Some entered bartending as a ‘day job’ in order to pay the bills while they pursued their ambitions and life’s dreams. Others were professional bartenders whose joy, in addition to a paycheck, was the challenge “behind the stick” and in meeting and interacting with (hopefully) interesting people.

The job choices ranged from the corner bar to the lavish watering holes of the rich and famous. The lines between ‘job’ and ‘career’ were blurred.

Today…

While bartending is still a job to many it’s no longer seen as a way station on the path away from the booze business. On the contrary, it is more often than not seen as the launch of a career in the hospitality industry in general, and alcohol in particular.

Goals and aspirations are changing and here’s how the bartending profession is evolving.

 

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  1. From bartending to bar chef

Think about the changes in the culinary and food arts world. Cooks have become chefs, who in turn, have become celebrity chefs. This journey in the bartending world, thanks to the cocktail culture, has elevated the art of bartending – from bartender to mixologist to bar chef.

Regardless of the level, it’s an exciting time to be behind the stick with the craft moving beyond, “what will you have?” to “try this.” Back to Gaz. When asked what excites him about the current generation of bartenders, he had this to say:

“The creativity. The fact that they have gone so far, with [things like] molecular mixology, that has created a space for artistic people to choose bartending as their way of expressing themselves. So we’ve got more and more artistic people behind the bar, and I think that just keeps progressing and progressing and progressing.”

  1. Brand Ambassador

Back in the day at Seagram, we recognized the importance of the brand ambassadors but we looked at it from the consumer’s perspective.

We hired a (former) whisky writer, dressed him in kilts, made sure he could play the bagpipe, and sent him on his way to travel the country. With considerable gusto, he entertained and lectured consumer audiences on the basics of Scotch whisky and conducted tastings of Chivas Regal and/or The Glenlivet.

Around the same time, Diageo introduced the Masters of Whisky education program. This was aimed at consumers (at whisky festivals around the country) and, importantly, provided training to bar and restaurant staffs. (Unfortunately, this highly successful and groundbreaking program has just been unceremoniously dropped with lots of Diageo double talk about how it will become a better program in the future. Trust me, it was a terrific program and will be missed.)

In effect, for the past few decades, suppliers have realized that to generate interest in their brands and products, they need to capture the hearts and minds of the key influencer and gatekeeper, the bartender. Who better than another bartender? And so, another career path became available to bartenders.

This from Tales of the Cocktail sums it up nicely:

For bartenders looking to move on from behind the bar, becoming a brand ambassador can be a shrewd, lucrative step forward in their career, a graceful way to avoid the late nights and constant physical labor of bartending while still remaining in the industry.

The drawback? Not a lot of jobs out there for this niche, and thanks to Diageo, lots of people will be looking for new jobs.

For those who enjoy and excel at a brand ambassadorship, the opportunity to expand into a spirits company can be a likely further step in career development. Particularly, since major companies are beginning to understand that brand success and even revitalization comes from the bar trade and the people who know it well.

  1. Becoming the boss

Upward mobility and career advancement is not solely in the domain of the desk bound.

I suppose this aspiration has always been there, but I notice more and more that bartenders I know and meet have become creative directors, bar supervisors and/or Food and Beverage Managers. As multi-unit establishments expand and grow, the need for qualified leadership will also grow.

The key ingredients are a passion for the food and beverage industry, managerial skills, and for some, an advanced degree. Above all it helps to have a mentor and a work environment that nurtures and rewards business talent.

Pam Wiznitzer, Creative Director of Seamstress, and president of the United States Bartenders’ Guild – New York Chapter, is a good example. Here is her story from a recent Forbes online article.

  1. The entrepreneurial spirit

Opening one’s own bar is a risky proposition, with compounded risks if food is part of the equation. Tough, but not impossible, assuming the financial and managerial resources are in play.

However, the entrepreneurial path is not limited to opening an establishment. Read the Simon Ford story. His journey went from brand ambassador (international no less) to Director Trade Marketing (at Pernod Ricard) to Cofounder at The 86 Co.

If opening a bar is risky then launching a distillery is, well, perilous. And yet, many try and some succeed. In addition to financial resources, it takes training, patience, long hours, and people skills.

Just like being a bartender.

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In the weeks and months ahead, I plan to highlight and focus on this new breed of people behind the stick. In the meantime, if you think of anyone I should think or write about, let me know.

Cocktail Making

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