AMERICAS. Virgin Voyages’ Edgar Pacheco was crowned the Diageo World Class Cruise Bartender of the Year on 31 May during the final stage of the cruise competition in Diageo’s Miami office. The Cancún native will now represent the cruise industry at the World Class Global finals. [Respected Americas travel retail title Travel Markets Insider (TMI)* reported the news, and Editor & Publisher Lois Pasternak has provided us with this report.]
Pacheco competed against five other contenders from four cruise lines: Santos Mercedes (who won the title in 2015) and Alexandra Muresan from Celebrity Cruises; Patricio Salles from Princess; Gerlie Arbolente from Norwegian and Danny Judge, also from Virgin. The event took place at the Diageo Bar, which had opened for the first time since the pandemic just a few weeks earlier.
The highly respected World Class competition has been taking place for the past 13 years. Diageo said that the programme has been instrumental in transforming cocktail culture and over the years, has trained more than 400,000 bartenders from across the world.
Virgin Voyages Director, Food & Beverage Operations Jordan Bernstein (left) with winning bartender Edgar Pacheco (centre) and Danny Judge, who was also in the top four. (Right) Edgar Pacheco creating one of his winning cocktails at the 2022 World Class Cruise Bartender of the Year competition.
Pacheco will now join 49 other finalists in Sydney, Australia in September where they will compete for the title of Best Bartender of the Year.
The Miami competition was MC’d by Los Angeles-based Adam Fournier, who is the 2021 World Class US Bartender of the Year, and a Top Five Global Bartender.
The three 2022 Cruise ambassador judges were also heavily involved in the programme: Laura Newman is the 2018 World Class US Bartender of the year, the first woman to win the title. She has been a national finalist for numerous other cocktail competitions as well. She currently owns and operates Queen’s Park in Alabama.
Nathaniel Capannos is a bar manager, consultant, cocktail creator and another former World Class competitor, most recently placing in the US Top 5 in 2021.
Marla White, head bartender for Lona Cocina Tequileria, is also a World Class Cruise Studio Educator. Her work has been featured nationally in magazines like UpRoxx and Forbes.
White helped prepare this year’s class of bartenders for the competition, through the World Class Studios, a platform created by Diageo to help educate and inspire bartenders around the world through access to online training modules.
Specifically for World Class Cruise, Diageo organised four weekly online sessions for the participants, where they received training to get them ready for the final competition. Marla White was in charge of the training and was the World class Ambassador this year.
Two challenges test creativity
The Cruise competition consisted of two challenges. In the first, the six competing cruise bartenders had to present an original cocktail to the judges, created by using one of four topics that had been covered in this year’s World Class Studios training modules, taking into consideration sustainability, diversity and community.
One challenge involved ‘Underground Agriculture’ using geophytes (plants with tubers, corms or rhizomes). In this challenge they had to use geophytes to craft a homemade syrup and build a beautifully balanced cocktail using Don Julio tequila. In the Culture Club/Seasonality module, the bartender had to take an agricultural ingredient that means something to them, preserve it and incorporate it in a Don Julio cocktail.
Edgar Pacheco represents Virgin Voyages, one of the newest cruiselines to enter the market
The two other modules incorporated Ketel One vodka. In Home Brew, the cocktail had to be inspired by a unique, flavourful or funky community home brew (coffee, tea, beer, kombucha) combined with Ketel One. In the Community Spirit module, the cocktail maker had to recognise that bars, pubs, cafés and restaurants are integral community gathering places (including onboard cruise ships). They had to create a cocktail that in some way benefited their local community, either through direct financial gains such as funding or by purchasing local ingredients.
Each of the original six competitors had five minutes to create three serves, after which one of the three judges gave feedback. Of the six, four bartenders went on to the second challenge, entitled Wanderlust. Each of the four had seven minutes to create two original cocktails representing two different countries or parts of the world.
An essential part of each presentation was the story and commentary that accompanied the preparation of the cocktail. Appropriately for a cruise competition, winning bartender Pacheco based his first original cocktail on the legend of a famous ship wrecked hundreds of years ago. It had been loaded with treasures including rich spices. Along with his entertaining story, his winning cocktail featured a selection of the spices that had been lost.
Pacheco specialises in drinks made from mezcal. He was hired as Virgin Voyages’ first ‘Mezcalier’ and was integral in launching the Mexican restaurant, Pink Agave – with the largest tequila and mezcal library at sea.
*Note: Travel Markets Insider is a leading specialist travel retail publication dedicated to the Americas, with which The Moodie Davitt Report has a close, informal working relationship. Publisher and Editor Lois Pasternak can be contacted on [email protected]
