19/10/2015
The Essence of Bartending.
Bartending is an Art. It is viewed on many different ways by the people out of the industry. Ask a Bartender about the Bartending, and You will find that it can not be explained in several sentences.I have created this blog to further share my views on this subject and, together with You, to discover more, to help to evolve further and help the Art of Bartending to represent all of it's dimensions to a wide public.
Working with people, if that is what One likes to do, gives a lots of opportunities and opens many doorways. With a little luck, but a great will for development, such case will happen that amateur Bartender will get his own chance. What I wanted to say is that the real desire to move forward, hand by hand with a visible commitment and other little quality aspects that must go along will inevitably result in ones success. Multiple dimensions of our industry makes it more harder, but more interesting and challenging then in the old times. Thanks to that and contemporary communications, internet, availability of the information, makes it easier to each one of us to hold a grip with the trends and become a trend setter. All these facts to add more and more to the popularity of the pro Bartender as occupation profile, and a occupation to do for living. Hopefully more and more people will catch up with this growing industry. The main problem, in my opinion, is that dimensions of bartending are somewhat developing to fast that and this is very hard for general public to catch up with. Dimensions like Organic Mixology in its term, or perhaps a problem with perception of clean, nice, classy working flair that usually gets misunderstood by public, a public that expects fire and flames with bartender getting half naked while jumping on a bar counter and spilling liquor on peoples heads. And all this on a classy event, or in really speakeasy, sort of lounge place. Not to mention people asking for Mojito on every single "Free Booze" event, being surprised wondering why is it this time so if they had Mojito last time.
It is comforting to know that as more true Bartenders there are in the world, the easier things are gonna be put to proper place. Working as Pros behind the bar, we should all take in consideration that what We represent our guests is what they are going to take for granted. To sum up, a definition of Bartender in my own views. I believe that Bartender first has to be a good, kind, welcoming Host, respectful both to the guest and to himself. Must be a superb connoisseur of all possible types of beverage, spirits, liqueurs, condiments, all liquid and solid ingredients that might occur in any well organised Bar. Must know of Bar history, origins of mixed drinks, different concepts of Mixology, at least somewhat of Cigar culture, as well as cover the aspects of all of the dimensions of Bartending. Let's not forget the most visual of all: bit of a Flair to your Mixology.
Know classical and contemporary social trends and customs. I believe that a good Bartender must have that something, that little sense for a vibe in the room. Knowing how to create a positive atmosphere and how to control that vibe can give One true advantage in having ability to please all, guests, co-workers, manager, himself. Stars(horoscope/personality), a cultural view and pretensions of a person on those fields play a major role in having this ability. Back to basics, have to mention a wine culture and food and wine pairing, food itself, concept of international cuisine together with. Being able to put all these into a perfect balance makes one a true Professional. If a Bartender has experience in management, Bar, Restaurant even more, regarding to personality dimension and in generally it adds up more plus on professional profile. Personality plays a major role in Hotel establishment. Besides personality, qualities like flexibility, showmanship, body language, leadership, knowledge in other spheres of Hospitality industry, organizing skills, education, languages, accuracy, now it is becoming that Flair is also regarded as interesting, and other, are preferred in a larger scale organizations especially.
