Monteleone Cocktail challenge

Before I get to the day’s 30/30 drink, there’s one item I need to pass along.

If you’ve had even a passing look at the spirits & cocktails community on the Internet, you no doubt know that every July, thousands of bartenders, writers, hospitality professionals and cocktail enthusiasts converge on New Orleans for the five days of Tales of the Cocktail. This event is centered in and around the Hotel Monteleone, one of the historic hotels in the French Quarter, and this year the hotel’s Carousel Bar is marking its 60th anniversary with a cocktail competition.

Here’s the story: from the time the bar opened in 1949 and until the 1960s or ’70s, there was a house cocktail on the menu named, appropriately, the Monteleone Cocktail. Problem is, today nobody has any idea what was in the damn thing.

One could reason that it’s awkward to have an historic bar without some kind of namesake cocktail; that’s what the folks at the Monteleone have done, anyway, so to fill in the gap, they’re sponsoring an online competition to come up with a *new* Monteleone Cocktail.

There are no requirements on what type of drink it must be or what kinds of ingredients are used; what is required is that recipes for competing drinks must be sent to athornton[at]hotelmonteleone.com no later than May 18 (include your name, address and phone number so they know how to reach you); and if you’re a blogger, go ahead and stick your drink on your site for the rest of the boozy online world to try. Each drink will be mixed and judged at the bar’s anniversary celebration on May 21, and the winner of the competition will have their drink named the new Monteleone Cocktail, as well as win four nights at the Hotel Monteleone during Tales of the Cocktail 2009.

There’s a little less than two weeks to come up with a drink, so break out your shakers and get to work.