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Flair Bartending the story The year was 1987 John J.B. Bandy trains Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown in the art of flair bartending for the 1988 Movie Cocktail, the flair bartending revolution is born. Flair bartending, Flare bartending Extreme bartending & bar Juggler are all terms used to refer to the art form used by bartenders to enthrowl guests at a bar. This can be simple bar games, a little bit of magic, throwing bottles, shakers & any other piece of equipment the bartender can find. This can be simple basic bartending tricks to extreme combinations that are dazzling to the eyes. For most people Flair bartending was first seen in the smash hit movies Cocktail staring Tom Cruise, Brian Brown & more recently Coyote Ugly. Flair bartending has been perceived as a skill mainly used in up market cocktail bars across the world. Flair bartending is now a valuable commodity to bars & liquor brands wanting to add excitement to their venue or product & gain a competitive advantage on the competition. Major competitions are now held regularly around the world, the big 3 are Roadhouse in London, The Legends of Las Vegas & King of the rings Las Vegas. Roadhouse is the most prestigious of the big 3 as it draws competitors from every corner of the globe. The prize money & opportunities to gain a job in a better bar or gain additional high paying corporate work for liquor companies & events companies has seen a massive increase in the skills levels of flair bartender's world wide over the last decade. Also the amount of flair bartender training Video's & hospitality schools that teach bartending adding flair bartending programs due to the popularity of flair bartending have helped increase the basic skills of flair bartending, although most of the world best flair bartenders are self taught. It has now even become common place in cities like Las Vegas to hire South American Jugglers rather than American Bartender because it is considered easier to train a Juggler to flair & bartend, than a bartender to learn flair. 
For years debate has raged over if juggling should actually be considered flair bartending especially between the London Flair Bartending scene & the Las Vegas flair bartending scene but the exceptional skill of the current batch of Argentinean flair bartenders, juggling up to 5 & even 6 bottle has left crowds across the world screaming. Flair bartending is all about entertaining & if its entertaining it will eventually win over it critiques with even some of the great London flair bartenders now add juggling style sections into their exhibition & competition flair bartending routines. Flair bartending has 2 major homes London UK & Las Vegas USA both with totally different styles. Las Vegas tends to produce showmen with a high focus a nightly shows, whilst London produces a more raw style of flair with a focus on originality & producing crazy moves. The Las Vegas flair bartenders tend to work in Cocktail bars although as drinks like a screw driver (vodka & orange) are classified as a cocktail in the USA cocktail bars are very different, Whilst London flair bartenders tend to work in high paced nightclubs & bar restaurants. Which style is better depends on personal preference although the Las Vegas style has proved in recent years to be more successful in competitions. A skillful flair Bartender is more than just a bartender who throws bottles around, he should be cheerful and an entertainer who makes excellent cocktails of a consistently high quality. Flair bartending is about showmanship & giving the guest a little bit of entertainment to enhance the guest's experience. In recent years lead by Australian Flair bartenders it has become essential for Flair bartenders to also become masters of cocktail mixology to become successful, this trend has been lead by the Sydney bar scene which is rated 2nd to London for cocktail mixology. In Sydney some of the best flair bartenders Loy Catada, Joel Scholtens Lindsay & Hayden Wood (author of the Liquid Kitchen series of books) are also among the cities most successful Cocktail competition bartenders, this trend has continued with Toby Hilton one of London's best ever Flair Bartender, now among Sydney's top mixologists. 
Mixology is simply a word created by cocktail bartenders for their cutting edge cocktails. To be a great bartender one should excel in both flair & mixology. In recent years, there is a obvious elevation in bartenders combining greater mixology awareness with working flair skills all over the globe. To describe the meaning of Flair Bartending is simply tricks performed exploiting the equipment & ingredients used in the course of making a drink. Flair tricks can range from simply throwing an ice cube in the air and catching it in a glass to juggling several bottles of spirits. Thousands of people across the world practice flairing, both as professional bar staff and as a hobby. Although it is mainly seen in cocktail bars, some staff in ordinary bars learn to flair to break the monotony of the job. Flair can be split up into working flair and exhibition flair, with the key factor being that working flair tends to be simpler and quick so the guest gets a high quality drink fast. Exhibition flairing involves attempting highly difficult tricks used with the focus more on the show that on the drink. The earliest record of a flair bartender is legendary barman Jerry "The Professor" Thomas, who poured fiery streams of boiling water and scotch and mixed an original cocktail called "The Blue Blazer" all around the world in the mid 1800s. Today both working flair and exhibition flair competitions are held in almost every corner of the globe. Working flair competitions tend to have smaller time limitations, more drinks to be mixed & more liquor in the bottles. Exhibition Flair Competitions tend to have a higher focus on showmanship than the actual drinks being made. Also many competitions can have marks awarded for a bartender's cocktail creation. Many of the world competitions have different judging criteria. The real boom in the professionalism of flair bartenders can be accredited to the 2 greatest flair bartenders of all time, Nicholas St John of France & Argentina's Christian Delpech both took flair competitions from being a bit of a laugh before all the bartenders got drunk together, to bartenders developing training routines like professional athletes. It is no longer possible for a flair bartender to win a major competition with out committing to excessive amounts of practice. The Nicholas St John, Christian Delpech rivalry took flair bartending to new highs. Nicholas St John seemed to be able to defy gravity & use any bar utensil to perform tricks that left you questioning is that possible, to the point he even added flair using the clothing he was wearing into his routines. Christian Delpech is simply smooth, graceful & had the ability to time his whole flair bartending routine in perfect synchronization to music, he is also renowned as the greatest working flair bartender ever. So who was better, well watch videos & join a debate that has raged between the world flair bartenders for the best part of a decade. The most prestigious flair bartending competition in the world today is the Roadhouse World Final held at the Roadhouse bar in Covent Garden, London. Roadhouse is a pure Exhibition flair competition with bartenders traveling from every corner of the Globe to win Flair bartendings ultimate prize. Held on the last Sunday of every month competitors must first qualify over a series of qualification competitions & then on the last Sunday in November the world�s best flair bartenders fight it out. The Roadhouse is an underground nightclub & has a real cage fight feel. As the Roadhouse crowd sees flair bartending competitions 11 months a year they are also the best educated on flair & the harshest critiques of flair, a flair bartender must do something special to gain crowd support. The Roadhouse London is an Exhibition flair competition with points awarded for tricks with more liquor in the bottle. The LEGENDS of Bartending Las Vegas is America's most famous Flair bartending competition & includes 4 disciplines of bartending, accuracy, speed, working flair and exhibition flair. It is unique in that only a bartender with good all round skills has a chance of winning, however with 2 of 4 sections dedicated to flair it is normally the best flair bartender who wins the event. The International bartending Association judge's bartenders on an original cocktail made using Exhibition flair. The NATIONS & King of the Rings are the USA's answer to Roadhouse both pure exhibition flair competitions where the biggest and best flair bartending tricks are on show. In 2005 a USA based FBA launched a Pro Tour currently 14 events are held per year with 7 in the USA, so at this point the title of Pro Tour champion has been dominated by Flair bartenders based in the USA, it is a massive step forward in the continuing growth of Flair bartending globally. Every year the number flair bartending competitions grows to the point now that odds are a flair bartending competition will happen in a city near you this year, ever just for local bartender or in some cases attracting talent from countries near by. The earliest recorded world flair bartending championships was held by T.G.I. Friday's in 1987 however as it was only open to T. G. I. Fridays bartenders it can't be remembered as a serious bartending competition however the winner John J.B. Bandy went on to train Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown for the 1988 Movie Cocktail which was the start of bartenders around the world starting to add tricks into their everyday bartending. The best flair Bartenders from around the world. North America Graham Warner (Canada) Matt Cameron (Canada) Robyn Closson (USA) Terri Leeseberg (USA) Erin Connelly (USA) Benham Gernami (USA) Justine Keane (USA) Levi Donaldson (USA) Thomas Alley (USA) Sean Story (USA) Paul Trzcianko (USA) Europe Vache Manoukian (Armenia) Hugo Silva (Portugal) Neil Lowery (UK) Neil Garner (UK) Dario Doimo (Italy) Angelo Viera (Portugal) Steve Harmon (UK) Lee Lynch (UK) Toby Hilton (UK) Levent Yilmaz(Germany) Essie Nummenin (Sweden/USA) Vince Chapman (UK) Darren Frost (UK) Lee Johnson (UK) Kristot Drabik (Poland) Anthony Trueman (UK) Andre Fiore (Italy) Gianluigi Bosco (Italy) Gavin Smith (UK) Colin Griffins (UK) Marco Canova (Italy) Marek Posluzsny (Poland) David "Ginge" Reynolds (UK) Sylvain Glating (France) Australia Josh Carpenter Hayden Wood Ben Martin Leeroy Peterson Jay Kararanough Africa Terry Gillespe (South Africa) Clinton Weir (South Africa) Ange Alexander (South Africa) Vicky Patris (South Africa) Asia Siya Dee-Min Kim (South Korea) Moro (Japan) Reny (South Korea) Koji Ota (Japan) Eiji Narita (Japan) Kyung Seob Kim (South Korea) Mamat (Singapore) Nelson (Malaysia) Leo In Ho (South Korea) Chally Myoung Lynn-No (South Korea) South America Adriano Marcellino (Argintina) Rodrigo Cao (Argentina) Ati Tedesco (Argentina) a href="http://www.earthbar.org/video/RodrigoCao.htm "> Rodrigo Cao (Argintina) Rafael Arce (Argintina) Nicholas Aramayo (Argintina) Oscar Perez (Uraguay) Nahuel Frumboli (Argintina) No Female has won a major flair bartending competition, though they are greatly out numbered by the male competitors, the girls are closing the gap. With many very strong finishes. At present the Rodrego Delpech & Tom Dyer are hard to separate as the best flair bartenders in the World. Although Rodrego has dominated most flair bartending competitions around the world for the last couple of years, Tom Dyer was very unlucky not to win this year�s Roadhouse World Flair bartending final, with the extreme talent coming through the world�s Flair bartending competition pretty soon picking a winner will be harder than winning the Lottery. For anyone interested in Hiring a Flair Bartender please contact Earth Bar  |
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