The Matinee

I've previously written about my participation in Bacardi's annual Legacy Cocktail Competition; despite qualifying for the regional finals twice, I never really managed any great success in it. Luckily for anyone who's interested in how things go beyond the initial stages, Metinee Kongsrivilai, head bartender at the Bon Vivant up here in Edinburgh, not only qualified for the UK final but made it into the final round as one of "three most promising" competitors. The other finalists are Quo Vadis' Zdenek Kastanek and Jody Monteith from bar consultancy the Liquorists.

The Matinee

50ml Bacardi Superior
2-4 kaffir lime leaves
12.5ml Martini Rosso
12.5ml lemon juice
12.5ml vanilla sugar syrup
12.5ml egg white

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into a chilled stemmed glass. Garnish with a kaffir lime leaf.

One of the difficult parts of a competition entry is the name and it's always interesting to hear how they come about. Metinee says that "the Matinee itself is based - not on my name, even though it start out as a joke, but on the basis that I wanted the drink to a form of entertainment you can enjoy, day or night. I also felt that it's a nice, short and memorable name and it suits the drink well."

A lot of the recipes I put together are for events or promotions and are designed to fulfil a particular brief. Once the event or promotion - or competition - is over, I don't tend to dwell on them. The difference between the Legacy competition and other competitions is that if you make that final round, you're going to be spending a year promoting that one drink. As Metinee puts it, "I don't even need to go Puerto Rico, I just want this drink to have a future."

Two men enter, one man leaves

By "men", I mean multi-national corporations, and by "enter the Thunderdome", I mean "argue about the future of distilling in the US Virgin Islands" through that most honourable of mediums -  the press release.

It all kicked off with a missive from Diageo North America snappily titled Bacardi, World's Largest Recipient of Public Rum Subsidies, Leads Hidden Campaign to Drive Rum Competitor out of the United States and Destroy the Economy of the U.S. Virgin Islands. It's the kind of title that suggests they're not going to attempt a shocking third-act twist ending. Of course, these kinds of claims can't go unanswered, but Bacardi seem to have come as possibly to not answering while still answering: their response runs to a whole three sentences. They didn't even go for a Governor Schwarzenegger style metatextual comment on their opponent. Shame.

Anyway, let's have a good clean fight. Nothing below the belt, and stay away from the eyes. C'mon, at least try.

[Via Olly Wehring / Just-drinks.com]

In review: Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba

Here's what I know about Cuban independence. It turns out you can write entire books on what I don't know about the history of Cuba. Helpfully, Tom Gjelten has done just that and he's even made particularly relevant to the likes of me by looking at the subject through the lens of the Bacardi family.

I hadn't really associated Bacardi with Cuba in the past. When they started printing "Casa fundada en Cuba, 1862" on their UK bottles a couple of years ago, I was one of the knowing bartenders who would turn the bottle over and point out the words "Product of the Bahamas" on the back label. Of course, I was aware that Bacardi had been founded in Cuba and had fled when Castro nationalized their facilities on the island in 1960, but I'd never thought of it as being particularly tied to any one country. My experience of Bacardi was as a global product from a multi-national corporation. But from small acorns, y'know.

The impressive thing about Gjelten's book is the way he emphasizes those Cuban roots at every stage of the story. There are points when the company seems to represent everything Cuba could be and yet, by the end, the Bacardi company I'm familiar is as far away from the old idea of a free Cuba as the Castro regime. The Bacardis turn out to be the perfect guides to Cuban history, from Facundo Bacardi's struggle to establish a life for his family during the Spanish colonial period to Emilio Bacardi Moreau guiding both his company and hometown through revolution and regime change. There are cameos from Theodore Roosevelt, Ernest Hemmingway, Che Guevara, and there's always the long shadows cast by Cuba's homegrown dictators, Batista and Castro.

It's not a book about bartending. It often seems like the fact that the Bacardis made rum is incidental to the drama, which is, I guess, true. Ultimately, it's a book about people and the trouble that comes when you get enough of them together to form a family, to form a company, or to form a nation.