Portland Cocktail Week - Day 1: Opening Party
By Geoffrey Kleinman on 10/21/2011
The opening party for a cocktail week really sets the tone for the whole event. It's the first time that it really gets to expose its DNA and show off what it's all about. For Portland Cocktail Week, the opening was a welcome cocktail party thrown by Pernod Ricard at Wilf's, an old jazz club located at Portland's Union Station.
The location of the party at Wilf's fit the 1950's theme, and of course most of the attendees reveled at the opportunity to dress up which, along with the nice subtle jazz music, gave the party a classy and sexy vibe. But there was another reason the party was sited at a train station: over 70 bartenders coordinated their travel from Seattle to arrive at the Portland Amtrak station at the same time. Their arrival really heralded the start of the event.
The mix of bartenders at Portland Cocktail Week Opening Party was a great one and everyone came together and intermingled seamlessly. Some of the Portland bartenders in the mix included Jeffrey Morgenthaler, Adam Robinson, Emily Baker, Nathan Gerdes, and Tommy Klus. They were joined by a large group of Seattle bartenders including Anu Apte, Ted Munat, Jim Romdall, Rocky Yeh, Nathan Weber, and Anya Stettler . Also in attendance from San Francisco were Ali Tahsini and Erick Castro, and East Coasters Jason Littrel and Misty Kaufman, along with a mix of key spirits publicists and brand folks including Shawn Kelly, Maria Pribble, Suzanne Freedman and Ria Soler from Pernod Ricard, Kate Laufer from Sidney Frank, Shannon Fisher from Hand Crafted PR, and Katie Burnett and Keri Miller from Watershed Communications (Portland Cocktail Week's PR agency).
The event also enjoyed the company of such luminaries as Dale DeGroff (who was making Plymouth Negronis table side), Dave Pickerell, Simon Ford, and Tony Conigliaro.
While the room got crowded, it never felt too packed, and Portland didn't feel like some out of the way outpost for all these people to come together, but a natural common ground. Dave Pickerell put it best when he said, "It's amazing, when I am in Portland, it makes me feel like I'm back home. It has such a wonderful, welcoming, tight knit community."
There were five drink stations serving a variety of cocktails, with the best drink of the night from West Coast Beefeater Ambassador Erick Castro, called The Statesman:
The Statesman
2 parts Beefeater 24
1/2 part Rothman & Winter Pear
1/3 part Green Chartreuse
1 Dash Regan's Bitters
Stir with ice and strain into a coupe. Garnish with a lemon twist.
To show that Portland never takes itself too seriously, a 'secret' after party brought many of the bartenders to Mary's Club, one of Portland's oldest and smallest strip clubs. Portland has more strip clubs per capita than any other city in the US, and they are also a part of the spirits culture. Jeffrey Morgenthaler and Erick Castro stepped behind the bar and served up monster gin and tonics (literally poured in pint glasses) as well as shots of Becherovka.
Portland Cocktail Week kicked off with a brilliant mix of class and irreverence, with exactly the right blend of people and in the right numbers.
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