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The world of blogging is interesting, to say the least. To be successful, you must be passionate about your topic and secondly you must write without reservations or expectations. That means you do it because you like to, not because you get paid. For most bloggers, in the cocktail realm, that is the standard. Sure there are perks, like free booze mail, which causes a Pavlovian response everytime the UPS truck drives past the house. Or better yet, there are a few advertisers that pay to place a banner on our sites and I’d just like to make mention of it.

The cocktail is going through another “golden age”, but it seems to be happening in only a handful of locales. This is understandable, since renewed ideas take time to grow and spread. But, in the city I live, London, Ontario (Canada) the idea of a good, or interesting, cocktail is about as alien as life from another planet. I am literally stuck in a cocktail backwater where ordering anything that is not a Cosmopolitan or Vodka Martini is effectively impossible. If I want to have a good cocktail I can drive two hours to Toronto or possibly 90 minutes to Detroit. Having said that, Detroit probably won’t be a cocktail mecca anytime soon. 

I’ve asked this question a lot over the past two months and you may have been too, so here is the answer. Well, it is a bunch of things that have created a giant time vortex that’s sucked all of my minutes from me for the last couple of months. Some of it fun, some of it work and some of it just headache inducing, nauseating, not so fun and it doesn’t pay, type stuff. Too bad you can’t just go to the store and pick up one of those card for extra life minutes instead of cellphone minutes. So on with the list of excuses!

Well, some of you may have noticed that my posting frequency has plummeted, but for good reasons, I assure you. I spent all of that time upgrading and redesigning this site, actually now called artofdrink.com, I dropped the "The". I probably would have been done quicker if I just did a basic make-over, but no, I had to upgrade the whole internal system, which was an absolute nightmare. Other than that I'm very happy with the new design, which should provide a whole lot more flexibility in the future. For all the new features and benefits please read on, but if you are reading this via an RSS feed, you should check out the main page, at least once, to get a look at the redesign.

by Caroline O'Neil

Okay, so where's Darcy and where in the heck have I been? I did a few guest posts a little while ago. Alright so it was a long time ago. Most of you have probably already forgotten about Darcy's boss. I assure you that I am not responsible for Darcy's absence. He started off the new year with BIG plans and he has diligently been working on delivering them.

Another year has passed and as always it is a good time to look forward. Even though, like most people, I have big ideas for the coming year, they don't always pan out. But, if you set the bar too low, you'll never accomplish anything. Set the bar way too high, and by the end of the year you may not succeed in reaching that lofty height, but you'll probably end up going higher than you thought. So as per my usual, I have big plans, but don't hold me to them.

As usual,it is the time of year where I like to reflect back on the last twelve months and list some of the highlights and lowlights for the Art of Drink. Overall it was a great year with the idea of a good cocktail having broken through in a significant way. There is still a long way to go before cocktails replace beer and wine, but 2007 was a very progressive year. It was also a good year for the Art of Drink. Currently this is the 315th article published, and the site has 1766 comments. This year the site had 484,761 unique visitors with 2,106,623 pages delivered. Not bad for something that started off as a way to collect my thoughts on all things bar related. Testing123

Just wanted to say happy holidays to everyone. Thanks for reading and participating, it has been another great year. In the next few days I'll do the usual formulaic year in review, plus a look forward to 2008. Merry Christmas and a belated Eid Mubarak and Happy Hanukkah.

Every once in a while I get a comment that rubs me the wrong way. I usually ignore them and press the “junk comment” button, sending the offending comment down the proverbial data toilet. But this comment is epic. When dumb people speak, or type, the truth can be found in between the lines. Hell, some of it is spelled out very clearly. This one is supposedly from someone who thinks they are the best thing to happen to bartending since Jerry Thomas. Everything he says in his comment is everything I hate about bartending. Don’t get me wrong, I love bartending, but it is people like this that make being a “professional” bartender difficult.

Well, it isn’t often that I take a break from writing about cocktails and such, but with the nice autumn weather there seemed to be a lot of yard work, and home improvements, to do. Also, it has been a rare week where TV has pulled me from my beloved Internet connection. I guess we all need an occasional break from the things we normally do. But that doesn’t mean I stopped experimenting with cocktails and such. Actually, I discovered a great new purpose for Angostura bitters, continued to work on my batch of Pimento Dram and started work on a liquor related side project.

This is one of those general update post to let you know what I have in the queue and what I’ve been working on. The month of August has been exceptionally quiet in the blogosphere, well for me at least. It must be the hangover from Tales of the Cocktail. The quiet time has allowed me to work on a few projects that have been sitting on the backburner.

Now that I seem to have more time on my hands I've started working on my Inventory system again. I've just added information and reviews of Luxardo Maraschino and El Dorado 5 Year Old Rum to the database. Hopefully I can add a few bottles each week and finish off that project. I've also fixed the Comment issue, so it now only takes a couple of seconds to post a comment instead of 30 seconds. It was a problem with the spam filter, seeing as how the Art of Drink is seriously swamped with spam (a couple hundred a day). Boo. I'm also testing an upgrade to the new Movable Type 4.0 software, so things may go wonky at times, but hopefully not. Other than that thing are running smoothly.

by Caroline O'Neil

After taking inventory of Darcy’s liquor collection, I decided to award my favourites. I will openly admit that my taste buds are not as refined as Darcy’s and that I have not even come close to sampling everything in his bar. Some of the awards are simply based on experience. I have included a couple of additional categories for extra credit towards my homework. I’m sure that Darcy has already reviewed most of my selections so I will post a link to what the expert thinks.

And the winners are, drum roll please

The week is finally here and I’ll be flying out early tomorrow morning to New Orleans. I think tomorrow may very well be a 20+ hour day. Up at 4AM to get to the airport and the VIP dinner is tomorrow night, which may lead to a long, but fun, evening. Anyway, my agenda is pretty full so I’m not sure how many posts I’ll get to do while I’m in New Orleans, plus I lost my PDA which I was going to use to post (yay, my wife found it, so expect more posts!). I’ve lined up a guest blogger who’ll provide some humorous content on Friday. A full write up, with pictures, will be forth coming when I return. So here’s what going on in New Orleans.

The online world of the cocktail just keeps growing. I always like to post about these new sites to help encourage the owners to continue writing. Recognition is the only reward they may get for all of their research, photography, video editing and writing efforts. On a related note, Paul, over at Cocktail Chronicles, has been doing a great job of highlighting the new spirit and cocktail based websites popping up around the Internet, but if you haven’t browsed over there, then here is what’s new.

What do you do after almost two years of blogging about cocktails and spirits? Some people let their blogs decay into irrelevance, others continue with the status quo and others decide to move to the next level. What’s the next level you ask? Well hopefully bringing more content to the site, such as videos (which I’m really interested in doing, but only if they are done professionally), mixology research and increased posting frequency. But to achieve that, without dropping my standard of living, which would make my wife very unhappy, requires some form of income. So providing ad space for food and beverage related companies can help bring this site to the next level. If I spend anymore time on the Internet my wife could very well have me checked into an Internet Addiction Rehab Center. After the last “intervention” type incident, I promised her that my time spent on the Internet was to be for beneficial purposes only. If I can prove to her that writing this blog is part of my employment income then we’re golden.

Over at the Cocktail Chronicles, Paul has been doing a great job of promoting Tales of the Cocktail and his (our) participation in a number of events. So it is my turn to let everyone know what is going on in New Orleans and try to encourage you to attend Tales of the Cocktail (July 18 to 22nd). Also, the London Free Press published an article about Tales of the Cocktail, The Art of Drink and all things cocktail related. So if you get a chance go check it out, it is very well written and regular readers of this site would find it interesting.

When I get bored, I sometimes like to browse through the weblog my website generates and see where people are coming from and what they are searching for. Most of the access log is pretty boring, and repetitive, but scattered throughout the log are some interesting questions, that people type into their favorite search engine, and I get to see. Some are good questions, some are odd, and others…., well I’ll leave it at that. So, I’ve decided to answer a few of the questions here.

There are lots of topics worthy of being posted on The Art of Drink, but many times there just isn’t enough content to make a post long enough to be interesting. So all those little pieces of information get squirrel away and lost. Some of these things are genuinely interesting, so I figured that combining them into one post would make sense. In this summary we’ll look at Tales of the Cocktail, some interesting new products from Forty Creek and some general blog happening and other worthy news bits.

Well, in an interesting turn of events I am no longer working behind the bar at the restaurant, which I now refuse to mention. When I went into work on Thursday I discovered that the manager had replaced me. Really, it isn’t a bad thing, since I hadn’t really enjoyed working there since last October (2006). But, I did enjoy the guests, and the staff. The kitchen staff were by far the best crew that I ever had the opportunity to work with, true professionals. But on an interesting side note, the Chef handed in his resignation a week before I was let go. That might give you a little insight. This post is long, and I haven’t proof read it, so excuse the errors.