Forming the Washington State Bartender's Guild - Raising The Bar

by Keith Waldbauer, Posted Jan 26th 2009 @ 8:59AM

Today is a special day for me. It is a special day for all spirit and cocktail enthusiasts throughout the state of Washington. For in a few hours, several of the nations premier absinthe producers and our own resident experts will gather downtown in a small artists loft for the first event produced by the Washington State Bartender's Guild.

This event will be the exclamation point on a long process that began last summer when I cornered Andrew Friedman, owner of a wonderful local bar named Liberty, and we began discussing how to form a collective of bartenders into a guild, similar to what the bartenders in Oregon had recently done. We recruited several talented bartenders and began laying the groundwork.

We started with a Mission Statement:

The WSBG exists as an organization of professionals and enthusiasts with an enduring mission to elevate the standard of bartending as a craft. The key to this goal is simple: we are a state- wide collaborative community dedicated to a heightened expectation of quality cocktails, spirits, wine and beer, the promotion and recognition of an excellence in service and an ongoing education of our membership.

We developed our own website, established a charter and, in November, held a meet-and-greet party as part of a membership drive. That party generated some positive press attention for our little guild.

Which leads us to today.

Gathering in this small loft today are several luminaries of the spirit and cocktail world. The absinthe forum will begin with a presentation by Paul Clarke, author of cocktailchronicles.com and contributing editor at Imbibe magazine, and Gwydion Stone, president of the Wormwood Society and maker of Marteau. That presentation will be followed by a tasting of different absinthes by representatives of Pacific, Lucid, St. George, Marteau, Pernod, Leopold Bros., Trillium and Taboo. Original cocktails will be mixed by nationally acclaimed bartenders Jamie Boudreau and Jim Romdall. In attendance will be some of the best bartenders in our city, including Murray Stenson, whose example has inspired our city's passion for classic cocktails and exemplary service. Most, if not all, of our city's newspapers will be there.

So, you see, today is a special day for me and Andrew and all the founders of the Washington State Bartender's Guild. A conversation and an idea that began outside the Zig Zag Café on a warm summer night will come to life on an afternoon of snow flurries near the Seattle waterfront. The bartenders and spirit enthusiasts of Seattle will be drinking absinthe tonight, and we will be learning about its history and its future from nationally acclaimed experts and producers. Tonight it is absinthe. Tomorrow, vermouth. From there, we have big ideas. We have a mission statement to fulfill, a promise to our burgeoning membership to keep. Our to-do list after tonight will grow larger.

But tonight. . . this night I get to savor.

Filed Under: Raising the Bar, Drink Recipes, Drinks, Tastings
Tags: absinthe, cocktails, raising the bar, spirits