Tom Gabb: Competitions: a fun but disquieting experience

I’m starting to realise that cocktail competitions are big business. With almost all major spirits producers now holding showdowns, as well as informal bar-led events and smaller brands getting in on the action, I would say that there will be easily 200 cocktail competitions in Britain alone this year.

Competitions are a fun but ultimately disquieting experience. You work on perfecting one drink that usually contains pretentious homemade ingredients like sous vide rosemary infused vodka. Then you show up to a dauntingly fancy bar and serve your creation to a room of 50 of your peers, industry experts and judges.

So what is this all for? At the end of the day, cocktail competitions are designed and funded by brands to sell products. They achieve this through publicity and making bartenders love them. They know better than anyone that nothing sells a product like a bartender who believes in it, and an all-expenses paid trip to Venezuela can sure help you believe in it. I recently reached the final of an international cocktail competition for Black Cow Vodka (a fact I’m dying to disseminate) and after talking to customers about it I realised they had no idea these events even existed.

This is something that surprises me for the simple reason that a lot of effort and funding goes into these events. The co-creator of Black Cow Vodka Jason Barber specifically divulged to me that the competitions that they run are few and far between mainly because of the monetary cost. Despite this though, they are never really marketed as a spectator event, or even circulated to a wider audience of consumers.

So, my question to spirit producers is “wouldn’t you want a wider sphere of publicity?” And to the public, “wouldn’t you want to see an iron chef type event that got you drunk and involves juggling bottles?”.