"Abigail Gullo" news and stories

This year marked the 8th year of New Orleans' Tales of the Cocktail -- a sort of bartender sleep-away camp complete with classes, swim time, and sneakin' into places that will not make your mom proud. With hundreds of bartenders, journalists, bloggers, and cocktail enthusiasts in attendance, Tales is a marketing extravaganza. Many spirits companies take advantage of the week, holding cocktail competitions, since they have a ready-made large audience already gathered.

Everything from wine to whiskey wanted to be in the newest cocktail creation - Yellow Tail wine, got in on the cocktail competition whirlwind by sponsoring an event, Catdaddy Mountain Moonshine organized a Bar Chef Challenge. This competition title made me laugh, pairing the high-brow title "bar chef" with a commercial bottle calling itself moonshine.

The United States Bartenders Guild (USBG) hosted a margarita competition sponsored by Milagro tequila. Fifteen bartenders from different cities competed. Abigail Gullo, from NYC, may not have been the judges' number one pick, but her lavender margarita won the approval of the crowds for the People's Choice trophy.

Recipes from the winners after the jump...

Anybody who knows me knows I prefer American whiskey like bourbon and rye to barley whiskeys like Scotch and Irish. I do enjoy a dram of other styles from time to time, particularly from a dear gentleman named John Glaser, the whisky maker behind Compass Box brands.

His rebel whiskeys paired with a rebel rye girl named Abigail Gullo recently turned up another cocktail to defy my "there ain't no such thing as a good Scotch cocktail" banter. As a fellow lady bartender, Ms. Gullo loves her American whiskey cocktails like me, but took on the challenge to make one I can find palatable. She combined the pungency of Scotch with the herbal Chartreuse and floral sweetness of her lavender syrup, bringing it all together with the brightness of lemon.

As a nod to her French-Canadian roots, she named the drink in honor of friends attending law school at McGill University in Montreal.

Check out the recipe for the McGill Law Review Cocktail after the jump.