The third annual Manhattan Cocktail Classic wrapped on Tuesday, May 15 with a top-secret "Anti-Gala" for over 1000 of the spirits industry's movers and shakers - the last hurrah of New York's most spirited festival of the year, and a tongue-in-cheek antidote to the über-glitzy (and impossibly sold-out) opening night Gala held at the landmark New York Public Library. The festival's opening Gala was attended by over 3,000 well-heeled attendees, who sipped on nearly 30,000 hand-crafted cocktails served up by over 150 of the world's greatest bartenders. Other (quantifiable) highlights from the evening included 5,000 oysters, 5,000 meatball sliders, 300 pounds of charcuterie, 300 pounds of jumbo shrimp, 6 live jazz bands, 6 tons of ice, 5 barbers, 3 deejays, 3 popsicle carts, and 1 much-photographed taxidermied grizzly bear.

This epic event was but the opening bell of the five action-packed days of Classic festivities. With 67 other publicly ticketed events on offer, as well as a multi-day invitation-only trade conference, the 2012 Classic garnered over 8,000 attendees from both near and far afield. The aforementioned "Industry Invitational", headquartered at the stunning Andaz 5th Avenue Hotel, ran parallel to the publicly ticketed events, and on its own proffered over 100 panels, presentations, tastings, and activities over the course of the four-day conference.

"We're never content to just sit on our laurels," says festival founder and director Lesley Townsend. "The Industry Invitational was a mammoth undertaking this year - as was our NFC-enabled 'cocktail tracking' experiment at the Gala. But both were received with such unbridled enthusiasm...how could that not inspire us to keep chasing after bigger and better things in 2013? We have about a million and one ideas up our sleeve at any given moment; the hard part is just choosing which crazy ideas we're going to try to tackle next."

While the full reveal may not come until later, the Classic has indeed announced its dates for next year's festival: May 17 - 21, 2013. For more information, please visit the official website at www.manhattancocktailclassic.com.

Though it sounds like a condition for which an elderly gentleman might need to see an urologist, in actuality Dry Sack is the world’s most popular sherry. Produced in and around the city of Jerez in southwestern Spain, sherry is wine fortified with brandy after fermentation. For over one hundred years, Dry Sack has been made from a blend of white Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez grapes aged a minimum of six years under Spain's time-honored solera system of fractional blending, which involves rotating the wine through a series of barrels.

Because it’s lighter and sweeter and hence more palate-friendly than most dry sherries, Dry Sack is an ideal ingredient for preparing the most popular of all sherry-based cocktails, the Cobbler, a refreshing fruity adult treat usually served over ice in a wine goblet or old-fashioned glass. My favorite modern twist on the classic Cobbler was invented a few years back by celebrated NYC bartender Giuseppe Gonzalez, whose Madroño (the Spanish word for a strawberry tree) took top honors at the 2007 U.S. Sherry Cocktail Competition. Though it may look like your average fru-fru drink, tasting reveals that the Madroño has got some serious zing to it, as Gonzalez offset the inherent sweetness of the Madroño’s main ingredients with a dash of Torani Amer liqueur, America’s answer to the nearly impossible to find bitter orange French apertif Amer Picon.

Hello, my name is Curtis and I'll be your website wing-man. Actually, I'll be Danny's journalistic wing-man as we resume our Spirited Gotham Adventures series next week.

That's right, fellow imbibers. Starting sometime Sunday, the tag-team investigative unit of The Imbiber will be blogging words and images in real time from the Big Apple, pursuing the Great Truth of Italian wines at Vino 2011. I've watched the entire "Rome" HBO series and those great History Channel shows while drinking only Italian vino, so I'm more than prepared.

You may recall The I-Team's work from previous East Coast adventures, including the Todd English tribute video and of course several of those final chapters in Dan's last book. We've matured since then, though. Really. Expect the resumption of the Spirited Places blog and other milestones of intoxicating literature.

Vino 2011 is actually one of the bigger wine trade shows, and this year it's Jan. 24 to 27 at the Waldorf-Astoria in NYC. So you New York readers should avoid that entire section of the city – you know how the crowds get when Dan appears in public without the mask. Otherwise, we're going to get the bottom of this Soave craze, believe you me.

No public D.D. appearances are planned (there's a NYC signing for the new book on Feb. 15th, but more on that later) but don't worry. I'll be letting you know how it goes until, you know, we go dark for any variety of reasons. And if Mr. English happens to read this, let me just say Danny's much better now. Next round is on us...

In what may be our funniest Imbiber Show to date, booze-biz heavy-hitters Simon Ford, Aidan Demarest and David Kaplan let loose about drinking cultures around the globe.

Simon mixes Brambles and Tom Collins.

Aidan makes funnies.

Dave wonders what the hell he got himself into.

Give a listen. You'll dig it, baby.

"This was truly a historic and special day for the Peter F. Heering brand and family," said Adéle Nilsson (left), CEO of the Xanté & Peter F. Heering Company, and official COB (Crush of the Imbiber).

She was referring to a soiree held recently at the Historic Campbell Apartment in New York City at which vintage bottles of Cherry Heering from 1890 & 1950 were unveiled and opened.

Our sources tell us the event was spectacular. The Campbell Apartment was formerly the luxurious office and salon of '20's mogul John W. Campbell. A real fancy-pants kinda place. Models were on hand wearing vintage dresses by Lars Wallin, one of Sweden’s foremost haute couture-designers.

The Drink:  Redbreast Irish Whiskey
The Place: Chelsea Hotel, New York City
Space/Time: 3 a.m.


Redbreast is clearly among the elite Irish whiskeys, but that’s not what makes it great for drinking at 3 a.m. with the ghosts of the Chelsea. What makes it perfect is the looong finish that allows you to contemplate the New York streets in ways unknown to those staying in hotels without huge open windows and a nice breeze fluttering the surprisingly stained curtains.

We’re here to talk about long finishes. The Chelsea is under new management, with resulting controversy, but it doesn’t take The Donald to see that a funky 12-story Bohemian hotel in this location (222 W23rd St.) with Manhattan real estate being what it is … hell, lot track of the sentence because an overwhelming stench of Doom floated up from the keyboard like landing-zone smoke in Vietnam movies.

But fuck that. If it’s finished, it’s going to take a while because of people like whoever writing the “Living With Legends” blog – an example of what blogging should be and a slice of justification for Western Civilization, which is in shorter supply dignity in politics.