Tales of the Cocktail, Day 1 (Wednesday 16 July), 2:30 PM New Orleans time

After the "Researching Drink Recipes and Collecting Books" panel was over, and Lis and I chatted with the panelists for a bit, we grabbed food -- I forget where -- and then went off to our next panels. I was a little late for mine; I don't remember why. Lis went to the "How to Get Your City, Bar, Recipe, or Bartender More Media Coverage" panel, which she can write about if she wants -- but the takeaway message was, "Journalists are even lazier and farther behind in their deadlines than you are. If you can hand them most of a story all nicely packaged and tied up in a bow -- with photos -- they'll be your best friend. They NEED an extra twelve column inches by yesterday, and if you can give it to them with very little work on their part, they'll take it. Of course, you need a STORY -- and stories are about PEOPLE. People are interested in people. So write them a story about people that their readers will be interested in, and give it to them, and bingo."

There's more to it than that, of course, but that's a lot of it, and it's something all of you can use, too. I mean, is there anyone reading this who DOESN'T need occasional publicity? Oh, probably, but, let's fact it -- most of you are writers, photographers, academics, musicians, jewelers, sculptors, chefs, cartoonists, actors, jugglers, singers, clowns, dancers, brewers, essayists, religious celebrants, graphics designers, some combination of the above, all of the above, or have some other profession or hobby that would be advanced by getting some sort of press notice in some sort of press.

Me, I went to "How to Create the Right Cocktail Menu for your Bar or Restaurant." Which was also fascinating.
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Tales of the Cocktail Blogging, Wednesday, 4:30 PM

After the "Creating the Right Cocktail Menu" panel, Lis went to a "Designing Smarter Bars" panel, which interested her from a user interface design perspective (among the takeaway messages she got: people fuck up architecture in pretty much every way that people fuck up computer programs, and for most of the same reasons -- and you don't have to get to a very high level of abstraction before the solutions start looking real similar, too). I didn't go to a panel, instead electing to go to a tasting that Plymouth Gin was holding. See, they're bringing a new product in the the United States in the next couple months: Plymouth Sloe Gin.

I'm cribbing this description from SOMEONE else at Tales, and I can't remember whom. It could have been one of the presenters at the tasting . . . "In the United States, sloe gin is a bottle you only find in dive bars -- and it's usually the scariest thing there. It's covered in dust somewhere in the back, and it tastes entirely artificial and like cough medicine only worse."

One step up from that, but still unbearably vile, is the stuff that the presenter's grandmother makes. She takes the cheapest gin in plastic gallon bottles that she can get from the supermarket, soaks sloe berries in it, and adds tons of sugar.

Then there's the stuff we had at the tasting.

I mentioned, on this blog sometime, what it was like when I first had the marasca sour cherries in syrup that Luxardo makes, didn't I? You know, the REAL Maraschino cherries?

It was the same experience, only more so. "Oh. NOW I see what the entirely artificial gross thing was attempting to be like, and entirely failing to do."

Imagine sloe gin. Except good.

Yeah, you can't do it, can you? I suspect that even you Brits will have trouble with this one, since most of you probably have the same kind of sloe gin that the presenter's grandmother makes.

For you, just know that the stuff in the States is even worse than that.

. . . .and that I kind of like it anyway. . . .