🍸 Inside the Competition: Cocktail Wars
Updated: Sep 2
There’s something I’ve learned about cocktail competitions:
You can feel completely prepared right up until somebody starts the clock.
Leading up to Cocktail Wars, recently hosted at the Renaissance in downtown Phoenix, I actually felt calm.
I had practiced.
I knew my flavors.
I knew my techniques.
I’ve competed before.
I felt collected and ready to go.
Then the competition started.
And there it was.
That rush of adrenaline.
That anxious feeling.
Your heart rate jumps. You start thinking three steps ahead while simultaneously wondering what everyone else is doing. Suddenly, something you’ve practiced a hundred times feels completely different.
And I definitely got into my own head.
That became one of my biggest lessons from this competition:
🧠 Stay clear-minded. Stay organized. Stay the course.
Do not go ADD in the middle of a competition.
The second you start worrying about what another competitor is doing, questioning your original plan, or thinking too far ahead, mistakes happen.
And I learned that one firsthand.
But this competition wasn’t only about me.
My coworker from Melinda’s Alley, Jose, competed alongside me.
This was his first cocktail competition ever.
I’ve been working with him, training him, teaching him what I’ve learned through R&D, competitions, cocktail development, and service.
So naturally, I made my young Padawan enter.
Before the competition, I gave him every trick and tip I could think of.
How to organize his station.
How to think about timing.
How to present his cocktail.
How to tell the story behind the drink without sounding rehearsed.
How to make sure the spirit and ingredients actually connect to that story.
Because competition bartending isn’t only about making something delicious.
You’re presenting an idea.
And Jose is naturally good at that.
He’s smooth.
He knows his spirits.
He’s confident.
He’s a great talker.
Leading up to the competition, I kept telling him:
“Bro, you’re going to win this thing.”
More on that later.
⚔️ THE JUDGES
The judging panel didn’t exactly help with the nerves.
There were some serious names from the Phoenix hospitality community at that table, including Edson from Céntrico, Representation from Cornish Pasty Co., Ross Simon, owner of Bitter & Twisted and Little Rituals, the GM of State Farm Stadium, and another industry judge.
A room full of people who understand cocktails and hospitality.
Once I saw everybody sitting there, the adrenaline became very real.
Round One was about to start.
🌵 ROUND ONE: FRESH START
Arizona-Inspired Mocktail
The first challenge was an Arizona-inspired zero-proof cocktail.
I wanted the drink to be bright, refreshing, culinary, and immediately recognizable as
Arizona without turning prickly pear into a gimmick.
Fresh Start
2.5 oz Seedlip Spice N/A liquor
1.25 oz Liquid Alchemist Prickly Pear syrup
0.75 oz grapefruit juice
0.5 oz lemon juice
1 bar spoon honey
1 dash saline
2 dashes lactic acid solution
Topped with soda
Served long in a highball
Twisted lemon and cherry garnish
The cocktail leaned heavily into bright grapefruit and lemon, with prickly pear providing that signature Arizona connection.
Using 2.5 ounces of Seedlip gave the drink enough botanical character and structure that it still drank like a composed cocktail rather than simply juice and soda.
The Liquid Alchemist Prickly Pear brought sweetness, fruit, and that recognizable desert flavor.
Grapefruit and lemon kept everything fresh and sharp.
A bar spoon of honey added just enough body and softened some of the acidity without making the drink heavy.
Then the lactic acid gave the acidity another dimension beyond simply adding more citrus.
A dash of saline tightened everything up, and soda brought lift and length.
The inspiration behind the name was personal.
🌅 Why “Fresh Start”?
More than ten years ago, I moved from Southern California to Arizona.
That move represented a completely new chapter of my life.
A fresh start.
There’s also something I experience almost every week now because of bartending.
When I finally drive home after working a late shift, it’s either extremely late at night or extremely early in the morning, depending on how you look at it.
Everything is quiet.
The streets are still.
Then slowly the sky starts changing.
Birds start chirping.
The city begins waking up.
It genuinely feels like everything resets.
Another fresh start.
I wanted the cocktail to capture that feeling.
Bright grapefruit.
Fresh lemon.
Prickly pear.
Clean acidity.
Fresh morning flavors.
Conceptually, I really liked the drink.
Execution was another story.
😬 WHEN THE NERVES TOOK OVER
We had to produce five cocktails for the judges, so my strategy was to double cocktails in my tins.
Two drinks per tin. One in the third.
Efficient.
Or at least it should have been.
In the middle of everything happening, I accidentally took one tin containing two cocktails and divided it between four glasses instead of two.
I knew almost immediately something was wrong.
The drinks were diluted.
The flavor was thin.
It didn’t taste like the cocktail I had developed.
And then I made the second mistake.
I started thinking about it.
Instead of immediately resetting mentally and moving forward, I got inside my own head.
Now I’m thinking about the cocktail.
Thinking about the clock.
Thinking about what the judges are tasting.
Thinking about what everybody else is doing.
That’s exactly where you do not want to be during a competition.
🔥 Competition Lesson #1
Stay clear.
Stay organized.
Trust your preparation.
Finish the job in front of you before worrying about the next one.
Because once your brain starts jumping around, one mistake can turn into three.
I walked away from that first round thinking:
I might have completely blown this.
Luckily, there were still two rounds left.
🌺 ROUND TWO: THE DETOUR
Mystery Ingredient: Hibiscus
The second round was the mystery ingredient challenge.
When I found out my ingredient was hibiscus, I immediately felt relieved.
I know hibiscus.
I understand how tart it is.
I know its floral character.
I know how to build around it.
That gave me an opportunity to reset.
I decided to pair it with bourbon.
The Detour
2 oz Copper City Bourbon
0.25 oz Licor 43
1 bar spoon Campari
0.75 oz Lemon juice
0.75 oz hibiscus syrup
1 dash saline
1 dash orange bitters
Served up
I intentionally used a full 2 ounces of Copper City Bourbon because I wanted the local spirit to remain the backbone of the cocktail.
I wanted those caramel, vanilla, and oak notes coming through.
Then hibiscus brought tart floral fruit.
Licor 43 reinforced the vanilla and baking spice.
A bar spoon of Campari gave me bitterness and another layer of citrus complexity without turning the drink into a Campari cocktail.
Lemon brightened everything.
Saline pulled the flavors together.
Orange bitters helped bridge the citrus, bourbon, and vanilla.
This one tasted good.
Tart. Floral. Rich. Structured.
After Round One, I needed that.
My confidence came back.
🚧 Why “The Detour”?
Life throws you curveballs.
And one thing I’ve learned is that sometimes fighting the detour only makes things harder.
You have to follow it.
When I moved to Arizona, I told myself I was never going to work in the hospitality industry again.
Then one of my first jobs was working as a barback.
That turned into bartending.
Bartending turned into an obsession with cocktails.
Cocktails led to competitions.
Competitions led to R&D.
R&D eventually helped put me behind the bar at Melinda’s Alley creating new cocktails every week and becoming part of this incredible Phoenix cocktail community.
None of that was part of the original plan.
It was a detour.
And sometimes the detour is exactly where you're supposed to go.
🤯 THEN I ALMOST CHANGED EVERYTHING
Before the final round, another competitor, Michelle from the Renaissance in Glendale, asked where the soy sauce was.
And for whatever reason, my competition brain immediately went:
Oh no. She’s a savory cocktail specialist.
I completely tripped myself out.
This is exactly what I mean about staying in your own lane during competitions.
Instead of trusting myself, I started wondering what she was making.
What if savory was the move?
What if I needed something different?
What if I was playing it too safe?
So I actually ran downstairs and started R&D’ing what eventually became my third-round cocktail.
In hindsight, it’s funny.
Michelle asking where the soy sauce was probably shouldn’t have caused a complete existential cocktail crisis.
But competition adrenaline does strange things.
The upside?
It pushed me into making something I normally wouldn’t make.
🛹 ROUND THREE: X GAMES
Anything Goes
For the final round, there were essentially no boundaries.
Anything goes.
I wanted to show versatility.
I could have built something squarely inside my comfort zone.
Bright citrus.
Fruit.
Tropical flavors.
Aromatic ingredients.
Maybe a foam.
Something I knew I could execute.
Instead, I decided to take a risk.
I don’t naturally gravitate toward savory cocktails.
So naturally, I made a savory cocktail.
I built a Gimlet-inspired riff using soy sauce for umami.
X GAMES
1.75 oz Commerce City Gin
0.25 oz yuzu liqueur
Slightly over 0.5 oz 2:1 honey syrup
0.5 oz pineapple juice
0.5 oz lime juice
3 dashes soy sauce
1 dash orange bitters
Served up
Orange expression
Dehydrated pineapple with an edible flower
The idea wasn’t to make a drink that tasted like soy sauce.
The soy sauce was seasoning.
It brought salt, fermentation, and umami underneath the brighter flavors.
Pineapple gave the drink tropical fruit.
Honey brought body.
Lime and yuzu brought sharp citrus.
The gin kept everything botanical and structured.
Then the soy sauce sat underneath all of it and gave the drink this unexpected savory edge.
It was weird.
It was risky.
It was completely outside what I would normally build.
Which is exactly why I called it:
🛹 X GAMES
I’ve always thought about how insane some of the athletes competing in the X Games are.
Men and women launching themselves off gigantic ramps.
Flipping motorcycles through the air.
Grinding huge rails.
Attempting tricks where one mistake could legitimately mean breaking their neck.
But that risk is also how
progression happens.
For my last cocktail, I wanted the same mentality.
I challenged myself.
I built something savory.
I put soy sauce into a Gimlet-inspired competition cocktail.
Basically, I went out there and tried not to break my neck.
🏆 AND THEN THEY ANNOUNCED THE WINNERS
Despite all the nerves, mistakes, second-guessing, adrenaline, and chaos…
The experience ended in probably the best way possible.
Remember Jose?
The guy competing for the first time?
The young Padawan I kept telling:
“Bro, you’re going to win.”
He did.
🥇 Jose won the overall competition from the judges.
When they announced it, I was thrilled.
This was his first competition.
He walked into a room filled with experienced bartenders and serious industry judges and handled himself exactly the way I knew he could.
Calm.
Confident.
Knowledgeable.
Natural.
Then they announced People’s Choice.
🏆 And I won People’s Choice.
So the two of us walked away from Cocktail Wars having taken both wins back to our hotel.
Jose took the judges’ victory.
I took the crowd.
For the two of us representing our property to come away with both awards made the entire
experience even better.
Especially knowing this was Jose’s first competition.
The Padawan might be becoming a Jedi a little faster than expected.
🚀 WHAT COMES NEXT
The win also created another opportunity.
We’re going to be invited out to the Renaissance in Glendale for a major pre-party before an Arizona Cardinals game.
The plan is to have us working satellite bars and serving our competition cocktails to guests.
That’s one of the coolest parts about these events.
You never really know what one competition might lead to.
A cocktail you developed for a timed challenge can suddenly end up being served to hundreds of people at another event.
One opportunity creates another.
🧠 What Cocktail Wars Taught Me
More than anything, this competition reminded me that cocktail competitions test a lot more than your ability to make drinks.
They test your mental game.
Your organization.
Your timing.
Your ability to recover from mistakes.
Your ability to communicate.
And your ability to stop worrying about whatever the bartender next to you is doing.
What I’m taking into the next one:
Stay clear-minded. Adrenaline is going to happen. Control it instead of letting it control you.
Stay organized. When you're making multiple cocktails under a clock, organization beats frantic speed.
Stay the course. Trust the preparation you did before arriving.
Don't get distracted. Someone asking where the soy sauce is does not mean they're secretly the Gordon Ramsay of savory cocktails.
Reset after mistakes. One bad pour doesn't have to become a bad competition.
Take risks intentionally. X GAMES reminded me that stepping outside my comfort zone can unlock ideas I wouldn't normally explore.
And probably my favorite lesson:
Help the people around you get better too.
Watching Jose win his first competition was just as memorable as winning People’s Choice myself.
🍸 The Competition Stories Are Just Getting Started
Cocktail competitions have become a major part of my journey as a mixologist.
And I want to start documenting more of them through Saints & Spirits.
Not just the finished cocktail photos.
I want to talk about what actually happens.
The nerves.
The mistakes.
The mystery ingredients.
The stories.
The ridiculous last-minute decisions.
The cocktails that crush.
The cocktails that fall apart.
The judges.
The people you meet.
The opportunities afterward.
And everything I learn from putting myself in uncomfortable situations over and over again.
Because that's where a lot of the growth happens.
This was Cocktail Wars.
Jose walked away with the judges' win.
I walked away with People’s Choice.
And together, we brought both victories home.
Not a bad night for the Padawan and his teacher.
Welcome to Inside the Competition.
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