Bartenders VS Sommeliers: The Final 2011

With barely a barblade between the two teams after the first set of tasks, our contestants locked horns again on Centre Stage at Imbibe Live to see who would be this year’s Champions. Chris Losh joins a noisy crowd to watch the showdown

After completing the initial series of eight tasks in early summer, the competition between the bartenders and the sommeliers could hardly have been closer. After picking out wine regions on a map, free pouring spirits, serving wine, taking drinks orders, making wine-matching suggestions, rustling up cocktails and blind-tasting everything from claret to scotch, our teams were separated by just two and a half points. 

After a slow start, the bartenders had fought their way into their customary position of strength by mid-afternoon, only for a late rally by the sommeliers to rein them back in. Now, both teams were here to do battle for the coveted Bartenders vs Sommeliers Trophy. 

There, etched into the priceless, solid silver cup (are you sure about this? Ed) for 2009 and 2010 was the word ‘Bartenders’ – twice. Could they make it three in a row, or did the corkscrew jockeys have what it takes to claw back the difference? Our teams arrived at a packed Earls Court with all to play for... 

Round 9

Pouring a Magnum

The first challenge sees our two captains, Dawn Davies and Sean Ware, tasked with pouring a magnum of Champagne Moutard into 16 flutes. This should, theoretically, favour the sommeliers, but in practice it’s something they hardly ever do, and honours have been split on this task down the years. With points on offer for speed, showmanship and accuracy, the two adopt very different approaches.

Possibly inspired by the 1970s jazz-rock-funk theme tune to Magnum PI that is melting the ears of everyone in Earls Court, Ware sets out of the traps like a startled whippet. He pours half a dozen glasses before Davies even has the cork out of her bottle, and races through the task like a man possessed. When he passes the finish line Davies still has nearly half her glasses standing empty. Would she gain points for accuracy? 

Calm and methodical, things look promising until the last glass, which has barely enough champagne to drown a mouse. She does pick up a couple more marks for being somewhat tidier and more elegant in her pouring than  the self-styled Rocket Man, though.

Round 10

The Quiz

Drawing inspiration from that fine televisual classic A Question of Sport, our teams have the option of going Home (for one point) or Away (for two). In the past, the sommeliers have often been forced to gamble on high-scoring ‘away’ questions, where their sketchy knowledge of all things bar and spirit-related has usually been the final nail in the coffin for their challenge.

But this year, with hardly anything separating the teams both sides stick to home questions all the way through. Even so, there are few correct answers. Quiz masters Stuart Hudson and Nick Wykes must have been in a particularly bad mood when they set this year’s questions, which are verging on the impossible.

The bartenders get off to a good start – correctly identifying the year that Jerry Thomas’s The Bon Vivant’s Companion was published (1862). But (unsurprisingly) they don’t know what year the first gin act was passed (1729) or the year Martell was founded (1715). They pick up a second point for knowing that Hogarth created the famous illustration ‘Beer Street’ but are tragically ignorant of Don the Beachcomber’s real name. It’s Ernest Beaumont Raymond Gantt, since you ask. 

The sommeliers fare little better. They perhaps should know what the largest champagne bottle format ever produced is called (a Melchizedek), but how often would they be required to pour something that contains 40 standard sized bottles? 

Unsurprisingly, they don’t know when Château Haut-Brion was first referenced (1825 – and not in Samuel Pepys’ diary, as they heroically guessed). And their description of the soil type in Champagne as Kimmeridgian limestone is deemed insufficiently precise. Though anyone who’s heard of ‘Lemnite chalk’ should  get either a medal or a life.

On the plus side, they knew who the founder of biodynamism was (Rudolf Steiner) and that Napoleon’s only non-French wine tipple was Vin de Constance. 

After blank stares all round, the day’s tasks are added to the previous round to provide the assembled watchers with the scores going into the final round. Scores: Bartenders: 290.5, Sommeliers: 290.

Round 11

SHOWBOATING

With just half a point between the teams and one round to go, this is the closest Bartenders vs Sommeliers competition yet. The 300 baying spectators roar, the music thumps, and sommelier Jake Crimmin’s name comes out of the hat to wrestle with making a Blue Blazer.

A high-end version of the Brandy Blazer using Johnny Walker Blue Label, this is not an easy thing to get right, sometimes failing to light, and often involving no small amount of personal risk as hot spirits fly through the air. 

Yet Crimmin seems unconcerned – almost revelling in the atmosphere, as Wykes explains what the judges are looking for. ‘We want a bit of style, a 13cm pour, and things set on fire.’ Simples...

He heats his tankards and chats knowledgeably about Jerry Thomas – even knowing the name of the cigar he was given for creating the drink and also reeling off the year that Johnny Walker died. His creation sputters a bit, then flames successfully. Crimmin hurls boiling scotch about with gay abandon, burning his hands in the process, but  too high on adrenaline to care. The judges are impressed. But is it enough?

The Bartenders’ ‘flair sommelier task’ is to make a champagne cascade: standing four champagne glasses inside each other, pouring champagne in the top so it flows down to fill them all, then removing each in turn, without spilling the contents. It’s a test of nerve as much as anything, and though it looks decidedly tricky, the contestants have managed to do it every year thus far. Can Marcis Dzelzainis continue the hit rate?

What – compère Joe Wadsack asks the bartenders’ trainer, Hudson, asDzelzainis prepares his kit – is the key to a successful cascade? ‘Basically, not to fuck it up,’ he replies with the kind of insight that may yet get him a job on Match of the Day.

Dzelzainis seems calm, which helps. His hands are steady, and he’s nothing if not meticulous. While the first two glasses are joined quickly, he takes a long time over the next two. The third glass  in particular is looked at from more angles than a Henry Moore sculpture. It’s taken out, repositioned, examined, tweaked  and, after about half an hour of deliberation, deemed fit for service. 

Finally, the four glasses are in a vertical stack and, to the delicate strains of ‘Eye of the Tiger’, whose ‘80s power chords threaten to topple the tower over, he fills the glasses with fizz. That naughty third glass proves tricky to remove too, but after a bit of wrestling, and some spillage, the glasses stand side by side, mostly full of fizz.

And so, the moment of truth. How will the judges score two successfully completed tasks? Have the sommeliers done enough to make up the difference? 

Imbibe’s acting bars and spirits editor, Nushi Wijewardena, reveals the scores. After 11 rounds of blood, sweat and tears, of hope, tragedy and despair, of... (oh get on with it, Ed) the scores are equal. The two teams are tied.

As a tie-breaker, it’s decided to repeat the final two tasks, but swap them over. The bartenders will have to make a Blue Blazer, the sommeliers will have to build  a champagne tower. 

Ryan Chetiyawardana steps forward for the bartenders, Kelvin McCabe for the sommeliers. The former has made a Blazer before, but it’s not, he admits, something he’s done with any regularity. This, though, would still seem to give him  the edge over McCabe who has never  built a champagne cascade in his life. 

Chetiyawardana looks cool, organised, methodical. McCabe has the relaxed air either of someone who is totally in the zone or has no idea of the difficulty and pitfalls of what they’re about to attempt. 

‘It’s so close...’ muses judge Wijewardena. ‘Can’t we all just be friends and hold hands?’

Photo finish

The two of them start simultaneously. Though it’s not a race, both are incredibly fast. Chetiyawardana’s Blazer is created in about two minutes – consummately professional and described as ‘divine’ by judge Wijewardena on tasting. 

Next to him, to the amazement of the watching audience, the judges and, possibly to himself, McCabe proceeds to build a rock-steady champagne cascade with ease, constructing it, filling it with fizz and dismantling it faster than has ever been seen before in the years of BvS. 

Throughout the contest, he’s been the sommelier who has acted most like a bartender, and this cockiness works to his benefit now. Still, with two pretty-much perfect tasks before them once again,  how will the judges score this round? 

‘It’s so close...’ muses Wijewardena. ‘Can’t we all just be friends and hold hands?’

Sadly not. The scores are totted up. Chetiyawardana gets eight out of 10 for his Blazer, possibly penalised slightly for lack of bar-chat. McCabe, though, scores nine for his newly-acquired skill and collapses into the excited hollers and cheers of his team-mates. ‘I was in the zone, man,’ he says.

Either way, it brings a  nail-biting end to a terrific contest, where both teams have performed at an incredibly high standard,  but one that the sommeliers just deserved to shade, and that sees their name going on the cup for the first time.

Is this the start of an era of sommelier dominance or just a flash in the pan? Will the bartenders return hungrier than ever before? Join us all in the pages of Imbibe – and at Imbibe Live 2012 – to find out!

Our heartfelt thanks to Diageo Reserve Brands for supplying their fine array of spirits, to Hallgarten Druitt for supplying great wines and to Schott Zwiesel for providing such elegant glassware.

Editorial feature from Imbibe Magazine – September/October 2011

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