Blogging the "Cocktails"

Exactly two weeks from today, I will be heading down to New Orleans to attend the fifth annual "Tales of the Cocktail" spirits convention.

I have attended before, but this is the first year I'll be going armed with a spirits blog of my own. So, I just wanted to let everyone know that I plan to blog the whole event, each seminar, each spirited dinner, each celebration and whatever incidental events might crop up.

Seminars I plan to attend with some certainty include "Lost Ingredients," featuring Ted Haigh, Joe Fee and Paul Clarke; "Rum's Punch," led by Wayne Curtis; "Enter the Distologist," with Anistatia Miller and Jared Brown (with whom I traded seats on the flight back from last years TOTC), and my Red Hook neighber LeNell Smothers; "Aromatics and Their Uses," led by Pegu Club grand dame Audrey Saunders; "Prohibition's Shadow" with Robert Hess, John Hall, Ted Haigh, Chris McMillan and Dale DeGroff; "Cocktails and the Blogosphere" with Paul Clarke, Chuck Taggert, Darcy O'Neiil and Rick Stutz; "Vermouth," led by Ted Haigh (who's certainly getting around this year) and Martin Doudoroff; and "Tiki Drinks" with Jeff Berry and Wayne Curtis.

I had really hoped to attend the "American Rye Whiskey" seminar with Allan Katz, as I dearly love rye, but a writing assignment demands I be at a panel running at the exact same time. I hope Rye forgives me.

So, watch this space. It all begins Wednesday, July 18.