Back last December I wrote about the Averna Cocktail Competition. I had been asked to enter the competion and to announce it and knowing what a great product Averna is I decided to try entering a cocktail into the competition. I was told that samples were being sent my way, since Averna isn't sold in Maine. After a few weeks with no samples to work with I figured they hadn't been sent out or had become lost during shipping what with all the massive blizzards and record snowfall we had in Maine. I contacted the PR folks and they sent out another care package to play with.

When I had received the sample to use in creating a cocktail I immediately started experimenting, but with the planning of my distillery in the works I never had time to come up with a truly great cocktail to submit for the competition. I spent a few days over a few months, but nothing seemed to click. I finally gave up since I wasn't having an inspirational breakthrough in designing they cocktail. When there was a week long thaw in the middle of winter I was dring down my driveway when i saw a cardboard box peeking through the melting snow and ice. i dug it out and found the original box of samples of the Averna products. I assume that the lazy DHL guy had just thrown it out on the side of my driveway on top of a snow bank because he didn't want to go all the way down the hundred yards to the house, hoping I would get it, and instead it was buried for a few months.

During the early summer I found out that one of the mixologists, Don Lee of my favorite cocktail bar in NYC, PDT, made it to the finals. He was just one of five finalists out of 30 semi-finalists, and over 200 original recipes submitted by some of the best mixologists in the world. Well, the day before yesterday I received the following announcement.

Results after the jump.