I was asked to be the head judge for the bartender competition section in the recently held Best Dressed Chicken Taste of Jamaica – A culinary competition put on by the Culinary Federation of Jamaica. Overall, the event had just over 250 participants working in teams or individually vying for a range of titles including the following: Chef/Junior of the Year; Junior Apprentice Chef of the Year; Pastry Chef of the Year and Bartender of the Year. This event also serves as part of the selection process for the Jamaican team to enter the Taste of the Caribbean Culinary Competition to be held in Miami in June 2015.

Bartender Competition

Bartenders are asked to prepare a variety of drinks to demonstrate their creativity and skills in three categories: Non-Alcoholic, Vodka and Rum. Each bartender has five minutes to prepare three portions of the beverage. All participating bartenders compete for the honour of Bartender of the Year. The final test of the weekend was The Mystery Basket, more like mystery ingredient, section. The participants this year were asked to design, prepare and present a cocktail of their choice using any of the ingredients of the basket which consisted of Appleton Genesis White Rum, Appleton Estate V/X, Sky Vodka and the compulsory item – Campari.

Scoring Criteria:

The scores for each drink in each section were as follows: for a total of 50 points judges were to weigh the following: Name, originality & creativity; timing, method & neatness, visual appeal and presentation; aroma, taste and balance; sanitation; contemporary Jamaican theme; use of recipe; cooking/flaming.

Participants are awarded medals according to the following:

o Gold 90 – 100 points

o Silver 80 – 89.9 points

o Bronze 70 – 79.9 points

We had 16 very enthusiastic participants in the bartender competition. It was an enlightening and gruelling two days of tasting 16×5 drinks in addition to other drinks made by teams for another event.

After the dust had settled the Bartender of the Year went to Adrian Johnson from Rockhouse, Negril, Johnson also won the best non-alcoholic drink category. A very close second was Gregory Goffe from Grand Palladium who also won best rum and vodka categories; and third went to Gossette Brown, also from Rockhouse, Negril. Congratulations to these gentlemen on their achievements.

This competition is very important to Jamaica and we should endeavour to keep it alive and take it to the next level.

Christopher Reckord – Information Technology Entrepreneur & wine enthusiast. Send your questions and comments to creckord@gmail.com. Follow us on twitter: @Reckord