Everything Delayed in the Cocktail Country
After a year under the spell of Covid-19, the surprisingly fresh-looking bar industry ruins invite to an investigation. Why didn’t I already start researching?
When I dedicated myself to bartending in the summer of 2018, the hospitality industry’s potential seemed limitless, especially for a young guy with a knack for writing and a somewhat healthy passion for drinking.
Even though I stirred my first Old Fashioned only aged 24, everyone made sure I didn’t feel late to the races. I quickly picked up a position as a writer with Cocktails of Copenhagen and worked my way up the Copenhagen bar ladder. Everyone was open-minded, menu tastings were plenty and ambassadors hungry for exposure.
The bartending career path was easier to explain to your parents ever. “Look, I am using my marketing skills to building engagement on Instagram, and I can use my hospitality degree to be an owner one day potentially!” A hard-working bartender dreaming of transitioning into a day-time job with a brand or a distributor as a part of their 5-year plan was not a lunatic.
Despite never being perfect, bartending competitions brought a healthy sense of achievement to those chasing these highs. Bar shows and conventions were an amicable cesspool of drunken knowledge exchange and acquaintance-level camaraderie for life. Built on decades of dedication, being a bartender lived up to its reputation as the best job in the world.
Even as we stared into the eyes of an upcoming pandemic, we were unafraid right until governments forced our bars to close. It’s been a year (mileage may vary based on location) full of change gone unnoticed under the pile of bad-to-worse news. It’s been the most significant turmoil since the prohibition, this time all properly documented. It won’t be fun to look back at this.
This week will mark a year since I moved to Estonia. Excited to see a new country, experience a new bar scene and hopefully bring something new into the local cocktail culture, the borders (together with my high hopes) got shut down 12 days after my arrival.
Despite the early struggles, luck was on my side. During summer and autumn, Estonia was one of the most open countries in the world. The only obstacles between me and drinking delightful Martinis was my contract to serve precisely those to my guests.
Daiquiris and Manhattans fueled an idea-orgy that culminated in the release of ZEST~ Magazine. Yes, I fulfilled my dream of writing my own printed cocktail magazine in the middle of a global pandemic. But it came at a cost. As a passion project born from abundance, when the pandemic inevitably hit Estonia, those riches quickly became a relic of the past.
It’s so much easier to focus on your side-hustle when you have the comfort of a full-time job that doesn’t feel like a full-time job because you love it. When the rent leaves your account automatically, and you don’t scout the bread aisle in the supermarket for something on sale, creativity works differently. And switching between motives isn’t easy.
ZEST~ was born as a “praise-platform”. “Look at those people and how brilliantly they’re doing their job! Absolute heroes!” And despite granting myself complete creative freedom, not only changing the tone didn’t work, it set the idea of the project behind full months. Back to the drawing board!
Unfortunately, the drawing board was mostly a Chrome browser filled with tabs of “educational” YouTube videos and a quest to glory as I brought a third-tier Spanish football club to the spotlight of the Champions League in Football Manager. The brain was still working and creating, just without purpose.
I wrote lengthy Facebook comments about new music releases, but the music industry is something I left behind years ago. A cheap excuse to still be able to say “…but I’m still writing”. I comforted myself that no one would expect me, a fresh egg to Tallinn, a foreigner not speaking the language, to be the voice of a community in crisis. But did I have to be silent? Or was I even given a choice? And what is it that we want to say?
Over the last year, I had only two or three brand ambassador encounters of the business kind. Bar conventions became a virtual thing. Diageo is committing to a new year of World Class, flying a bright flag and giving bartenders hope. Most remain dubious about how it will go, but no one is turning down these Black Label Highballs. Bacardi Legacy 2020 Finalists are still don’t know when and how they get to take to the stage. With some of them already forced out of bartending, it will probably make the most exciting competition final ever. I already imagine the many stories to be written about each finalist.
Join me on a series of articles digging into the big stories that unfolded “differently” as the world around us changed.
