mojitoThose of you who fol­low us on Twit­ter might have noticed a reoc­cur­ing hash tag yes­ter­day of “cockchamp”.

This was, of course, us report­ing live and on the sport from the New Zealand heat of the Havana Club Cock­tail Grand Prix held at Bet­ty’s. Ten of the best bar­tenders from around the coun­try bat­tled it out for the chance to rep­re­sent NZ at the world wide finale in Havana next May.

You may already know that Clare Har­lick from the Mat­ter­horn won, but what went on at the com­pe­ti­tion and at the VIP after-par­ty? Read on!

One of the few pos­i­tives about being made redun­dant (that’s right folks, I’m avail­able for hire!) is that when real­ly dif­fi­cult Welling­ton­ista assign­ments like hav­ing to drink moji­tos at 1pm in the after­noon come along, I am able to man up and take one for the team. I also took along Kim as my offi­cial pho­tog­ra­ph­er. She said she was unfa­mil­iar with gonzo jour­nal­ism, so as the first tray of Dark & Stormies (Havana Club with gin­ger beer, lime and bit­ters) came around, I decid­ed it was high time to teach her. That process was a lit­tle hin­dered when the next tray of drinks was dropped before I got my sec­ond, but soon enough I had an amaz­ing moji­to with which to drown my sor­rows, and the com­pe­ti­tion began in earnest! While we shook our mina­ture mara­cas and images of Cuba were pro­ject­ed across the walls, each bar­tender had ten min­utes to make three cock­tails fea­tur­ing Havana Club rums, of course, and present them to the judg­ing pan­el of Rex Mor­gan, from the Boul­cott Street Bistro, Riki Carter, reign­ing Havana Club Cock­tail Grand Prix NZ win­ner 2007 and Mixol­o­gist — Chris Har­rop, New Zealand Bar­tender of the year 2008.

First up was Dick­ie Cul­limore from E Stu­dios in Chch . He tried to win us over by com­pli­ment­ing the weath­er in Welling­ton but real­ly, he need­n’t have both­ered giv­en that his entries con­sist­ed of a Smoked Cedar Daquiri, a Pink Squir­rel Sour and a Rum & Raisin Re-Fash­ioned, all of which sound­ed divine.

Home­town favourite Jon­ny Mcken­zie for Hawthorn was up next, pour­ing out frozen cham­pange for the judges (and get­ting in the first of many obvi­ous prod­uct place­ment shout-outs to Pern­od-Ricard) to fresh­en up their palates. While he was crush­ing up char­grilled pineap­ple with cajun spices, he told a sto­ry about los­ing his job at El Florid­i­tas in Havana for refus­ing to blend daquiris (I can’t promise you that’s actu­al­ly true though) and said he was going to make up for it by blend­ing his drink today. With the clock tick­ing down and the blender motor whirring but not grind­ing, we were on the edge of our seats like we were at a Richter City match as he moved to shake instead. Still, his mix of rum and choco­late and coconut liquer topped up with Tuatara Porter was prob­a­bly my favourite cock­tail that I got to try a minute amount of on the day.

I won­dered if Ben Simp­son from Motel would be able to make three drinks in ten min­utes because I’ve always had unbe­lieve­lably slow ser­vice there, but he seemed to be on fine form, mix­ing straw­ber­ries, bal­sam­ic vine­gar and basil with sev­en-year-old rum. Kim, Lau­ra and I gig­gled like school­girls at the squelchy sounds of the straw­ber­ries being pound­ed in the shak­er, part­ly because of the moji­tos and part­ly because of our use of #cockchamp for twit­ter­ing updates, but most­ly because it turns out that bar­tenders are even more filthy-mind­ed than I am. We appre­ci­at­ed what he was going for with his attempt at recre­at­ing a moji­to made with fresh sug­ar cane juice using lemon­grass instead, but because that was just a straw­ful to taste, I think that the reg­u­lar Moji­tos that the Bet­ty’s staff brought around with quite pep­pery mint were the real win­ners. Yes, I some­times go for quan­ti­ty over qual­i­ty. So shoot me.

When Jason Clarke from De Bajo in Queen­stown stepped up, we were informed that his moth­er was in the audi­ence about to see him make cock­tails for the first time. He told us that he’d lit­er­al­ly give his left nut to get to go to Cuba, and it was sug­gest­ed that he gar­nish his drinks with it. I hope his moth­er was proud of him as he told us that he makes pina coladas for young girls who then turn to put­ty in his hands. Appar­ent­ly the secret ingre­di­ent isn’t actu­al­ly rohyp­nol, it’s a home­made white choco­late vod­ka. He also makes his own grena­dine, which seems to me to be going above and beyond the call of duty. His pina cola­da looked amaz­ing, fluffed up through a can­is­ter and served in an old-fash­ioned milk bot­tle topped up with gin­ger beer.

James Gog­gin from Rack­et in Auck­land had an Irish accent so he was quick to tell us that he has not been molest­ed by a priest. He had, how­ev­er, appar­ent­ly molest­ed the MC into car­ry­ing a red ice egg in his ass across the coun­try. His drinks were heavy on the bit­ters and were the most alco­holy-tast­ing of the ses­sion. James had also man­aged to find some­thing he called Nin­ja Mint, which looked like ecua­lyp­tus and smelled like mint crossed with basil. It made me hun­gry for Thai food. Luck­i­ly we had bread and dips by that stage, although they were eat­en almost as quick­ly as we drank our moji­tos.

Next up we had anoth­er local, Calem Chad­wick from the Mat­ter­horn. He spoke about Ernest Hem­ming­way, and made us hungy with his cin­na­mon smoke that waft­ed through the bar. His pre­sen­ta­tion was impres­sive, but he ran out of time. The Masked Barfly was amused to hear that appar­ent­ly it’s very hard to use nitrous foamers at the’ho cos the staff keep inhal­ing them all. Who knew?

Although appar­ent­ly the bar­tenders were sup­posed to stay away from polit­i­cal state­ments, Tim Miller from Mea Cul­pa in Auck­land still named his first drink Raoul’s Fol­ly. It was delight­ful­ly savoury with fresh thyme and pep­perdews pound­ed up with a lit­tle choco­late and chilli.

Charles Gillet from Toast in Christchurch was cer­tain­ly not the tallest bar­tender in the com­pe­ti­tion, which he empha­sised at the end of the time by stand­ing on a Havana Club box to fin­ish off his drinks. His self depra­ca­tion con­tin­ued with his Bro-jito, in which he mud­dled water­mel­on & water­cress, topped it up with L&P, gar­nished it with toast in the shape of a pig’s head in order to push the Boil-Up theme and threat­ened it with a can of Tui – yeah right!

I asked Sal­ly from Mighty Mighty if she was com­pet­ing, but she was just along to sup­port all the oth­er hos­pi­tal­i­ty peo­ple. The only female in the com­pe­ti­tion was Claire Har­lick also from the Mat­ter­horn. She riffed on the Mary Pick­ford, which use“a shi­toad of rum & a shit­load of sug­ar”. She was ner­vous, but still capa­bly poured flam­ing rum from jug to jug, focus­ing more on being very pro­fes­sion­al and mak­ing good drinks rather than enter­tain­ing the crowd.

The last com­pe­ti­tior was in very strong con­strast. Kyle from Havana Bar had been in tran­sit for 36 hours after los­ing his lug­gage in Mex­i­co on the way back from Cuba. He did­n’t let that stop him, as he flour­ished a mega­phone, sauteed a cig­ar in a pan of rum to get it smokey, and popped a great num­ber of cher­ries with his lit­tle prick before he brought in the big wood. The hilar­i­ous smut bub­bled over into his shak­ing tech­nique — “Some peo­ple like to use their sex face when they shake. I like to use my detec­tive face like I’m look­ing for clues. Which is also my sex face, as it hap­pens”. As the orange flower water slopped around, he acknowl­edged that he was­n’t going to win. But he cer­tain­ly seemed to be hav­ing a good time as he did it, as we were watch­ing.

The com­pe­ti­tion was sup­posed to run from 1–4pm, but it was 5.30 when we tum­bled out into the street for the break before the VIP Awards night. We returned to Bet­ty’s at 7pm for more Havana Club-based drinks and amaaaaaaaaaaaaz­ing fin­ger food – tuna tartare spoons, duck roulande, toma­to tarts. Oh, and for the results, of course. Claire took out the top prize, while Tim came in sec­ond, mean­ing he also gets to go along to Havana to be a rum cady. Every­one was in top spir­its, and it seemed to be some­what of a love-in. Jon­ny in par­tic­u­lar cement­ed his TAWA nom­i­na­tions for best ser­vice by ensur­ing that we always had drinks, even though it was­n’t even his bar. The Masked Barfly observed how it was kind of awe­some to be more sober than the bar­tenders for once. In fact, it was all very awe­some. Won­der­ful drinks were made, won­der­ful times were had, and The’Ho once again takes its place on the world stage of hos­pi­tal­i­ty. Thanks Havana Club!