How to Make a Tequila Mockingbird Cocktail

Rebecca: Many people only know about flair bartending because of Tom Cruise’s sleek moves in the movie Cocktail. But flairing has come a long way since then. Hi, I’m Rebecca Brieghten and welcome to watchmojo.com. And today I’m speaking with Maksim Ouellet about the skill. What is flair bartending? Marksim: Modern dictionaries define the word flair as talent, a star unique quality. But if we talk about flair bartending, it’s something unique that the bartenders perform beyond the bar. Like we see right here, it’s going to be flipping bottles, throwing shakers, tossing glasses just entertaining the crowd, spinning a napkin cocktails. Rebecca: How, when, and why did it start? Marksim: We don’t know when it starts really. But if we talk about modern flairs, I think that TGIFridays was beginners of everything. They train the bartender to flair in the 70s and 80s. They held the first known flair competitions to us called the bar Olympics. And the winner of this first competition was John Bandi and was the current refer and train actor Tom Cruise in the movie Cocktail in the 88. After these moments, you know, it initiate the sparks that the maybe exposure of flair bartending around the world. Rebecca: Are there different types of flair bartending the working environment versus like an exhibition? Marksim: First I think we have to talk about working flair. Because working flair is what you use when you work behind the bar. And you are in a real situations, bartender is supposed to always do something behind the bar. So when you have to be quick or in the rush, you’re doing move that improve your service, you’re using real booze and most of the time bottle are full, you can’t flip it or spin it and you don’t want to put it on the ground, yeah, directly on the ground. If we talk about exhibition in flair bartending, you can flip 4 bottles; you can juggle with everything you want. There are a lot of flair bartenders that just doing exhibition flair. Rebecca: What is a flair contest? Marksim: You know a flair contest is about making drinks, 2 drinks. You have 4 minutes to do that. You can be judged on your smoothness, controls, flair abilities, difficulties, flairs all over the world. Rebecca: How do you train to become a flair bartender? Marksim: For sure, you can take some course. There’s a lot of course you can find in the web. You can look at video. You can look at DVD contest and you have to train hard. It’s always as everything 1% talent, 90% practice, Rebecca: Thank you very much. Marksim: Thanks a lot.