Rum Diary Spiced Rum will hold the final of its very first Tiki cocktail competition later this month, after a year of searching the country for top bartending talent.
Over 100 entries and 20 state finalists from VIC, NSW, QLD and WA were narrowed down to four state winners. The finalists and their cocktails are:
- Julian Alphonse, LoopRoof (Melbourne, VIC) – ‘Ghandi’s Republican Army’
- Elise Godwin, Dominion League (Perth, WA) – ‘Tigers Tears’
- Josh O’Brien, The Bowery (Brisbane, QLD) – ‘Where the Forrest Meets the Sea’
- Conor O’Brien, Earl’s Juke Joint (Sydney, NSW) – ‘Gypsy Juice’
Entrants were given the task “to create a new Tiki classic with Rum Diary Spiced Rum based on your providence, history or somewhere/something special from your past”.
The four finalists will now be brought together in Melbourne for a weekend of challenges before the overall winner is crowned, earning themselves the opportunity to create their own Rum Diary Spiced Experimental Kitchen release for 2018 with Master Blender and Ambassador Daniel Monk.
The challenges are designed to test the competitors in not only the history of Tiki and knowledge of rum and cocktails, but also the practices and trends which have started to shape the future of bartending.
The competition will culminate with a live cocktail competition – where each of the four will recreate the cocktail that earned them a spot in the final – at the Rum Diary Bar at 6.30pm on 21 January, also kicking off the bar’s fifth birthday celebrations.
