The mood was reasonably rowdy. Plastic cups were heartily refilled with libations, as long as you could negotiate your way in the dark to the back of the low-lit bus as it rattled down the remote highway. We were a shaky cantina on wheels.
What seemed like half an hour passed before the driver pulled off the road, seemingly lost. But a few minutes later, two dozen of us were standing in the cheesy, hinterland confines of Martha's Cocina grubbing on what seemed like the tastiest tacos ever, and it was then that I knew: This could only be the San Antonio Cocktail Conference.
If you pour it, they will come
I've long been a fan of San Antonio's craft-cocktail scene, and that was without ever having been to its cocktail conference at all. Its major players are top-notch and mostly centrally located within a few-mile radius; the talent is legit and innovative; the vibe is friendly and as laidback as this bigger-than-it-seems city of 1.3 million. And last fall, I found one of the state's best agave-spirit selections at relative newcomer Mezcaleria Mixtli.
So as this year's fifth annual conference got underway last week, I was pumped to finally revel in its workshops, camaraderie and brand-sponsored fetes and tasting rooms for the first time. Plenty of DFW industry pros had made the trip, too, like Brian McCullough and Christian Armando of Uptown's The Standard Pour; bar director Eddie Eakin of Lower Greenville's Rapscallion; Bonnie Wilson, director of independent bar programs for Addison-based Front Burner Restaurants; brand ambassadors Josh Hendrix (Moet Hennessey), Michael Turley (Pisco Porton) and Tristin Westphal (Fever Tree); and manager Megan McClinton of Thompson's, in Fort Worth.
Austin Gurley of Deep Ellum's High and Tight was there too. "What brought me here? Good education, good drink and good people," he said. "That's about says it."
But they'd also come from Chicago and Los Angeles, from Seattle and New York. More than 8,000 tickets were sold for this year's event, which is quickly becoming the new darling of the craft-cocktail conference world. While New Orleans' annual Tales of the Cocktail, with 20,000-plus attendees, is the juggernaut granddad of them all, some feel it's become bloated and less fraternal. For Texans, especially, San Antonio's festival offers some semblance of "the way Tales used to be."
"It's more intimate," Gurley said. "At Tales, everything's going on at the same time. It's more of a party. This feels more like a family event. And all your Texas people come out and represent."
I looked forward to checking out The Last Word, the latest bar from local luminary Jeret Pena, and hitting landmark haunts like Esquire Tavern and The Bar at Bohanan's. I was curious to see how SACC's brand-sponsored parties compared to the over-the-top scope and pageantry of those at Tales. What I was not prepared for in the least was the Tito's Vodka Taco Bus.
Learning from the best
You might be wondering: Why, of all places, is this happening in San Antonio?
Here's why. Nearly six years ago, owner Mark Bohanan of Bohanan's Prime Steaks and Seafood did a cool thing. He reached out to Sasha Petraske of landmark New York City bar Milk & Honey, to see if the influential cocktail guru would come train staff at Bohanan's newly opened bar. (Petraske, who died suddenly last year at age 42, was one of the most gracious people in the business, and his legacy is remarkable and far-reaching.)
With Bohanan's request, Petraske's mark on Texas became indelible: He did train Bohanan's bartenders, instilling the now-widespread standards he had pioneered at the speakeasy he opened in 1999 - the craft of ice carving, a sense of decorum, the principles of proper measurement and so on. Those spores would spread as many of those bartenders went on to start their own bars. And two Petraske protégés, former Milk & Honey bartenders Chad Solomon and Christy Pope, had moved to Texas, consulting on bar programs around Dallas and ultimately opening downtown's Midnight Rambler.
Petraske and Bohanan had noticed that craft-cocktail events were starting to sprout around the country and thought, why not here? Their festival debuted in 2012, and on Thursday, as the fifth annual event kicked off, a group of about 100 came to Bohanan's to remember the debonair man who had helped start it all. The gathering included Petraske's widow, Georgette Moger; Midnight Rambler's Solomon; Dushan Zaric of New York's Employees Only; Simon Ford of The 86 Co.; Eric Alperin of The Varnish in Los Angeles; and moderator Robert Simonson, cocktails writer for The New York Times.
The session concluded with daiquiris, Petraske's drink of choice. And it's worth remembering that it was his generosity, know-how and style that gave SACC the street cred and staying power it has today.
SACC is still in growth mode, and this was the first year that attending bartenders, brand ambassadors, industry professionals and cocktail enthusiasts had to choose between overlapping panel sessions. Some focused on individual spirits, like Armagnac or sotol, others on career-related topics like managing a bar or being a brand ambassador.
Dallas' Kevin Gray of CocktailEnthusiast.com waxed on Cuban cocktails; Jason Kosmas, co-founder of New York's Employees Only and The 86 Co. spirits line, explained how to maintain one's bartending zen through even the busiest ordeals; and a group of mostly Los Angeles bartenders tackled physical issues arising from the bartender's shake.
Conference profits benefit local children's charities, with more than $350,000 raised for the cause in its first four years. Thursday was the festival's Day of Service, one reason Parliament bar man Drew Garison had arrived early for some volunteer work around town. A regional ambassador for Cornerstone, a national group of bar industry workers giving back to their communities, Garison spent a few hours demonstrating camping skills for one agency's kids and visiting patients at a pediatric transplant unit.
"SACC is great because it's low-key and community-driven," Garison said. "It's very much about the city of San Antonio and celebrating what's happening here. When you come to San Antonio, you feel very much at home. And it's quietly developing a world-class cocktail scene."
"I feel like I'm not even in Texas"
The parties, though not on the scale of Tales, were impressive enough: sprawling affairs occupying multiple rooms, floors or even venues, depending on the evening. On Friday, "Waldorf on the Prairie" billowed through seemingly every usable ground-level area of the grand St. Anthony Hotel. We glided through the crowds, an Absolut Elyx cocktail here, a Woodford Reserve Manhattan there, when word buzzed of a bus waiting in the wings and bound for taco parts beyond. Was this even on the agenda? Well, it didn't matter; the thing was leaving in minutes and if we wanted on, we needed to hustle.
And before long the plastic vodka cups were in our hands and we were at Martha's on San Antonio's outskirts; after that would come El Regio, a badass taco truck with a painted Superman on the side and finally Mi Tierra, a flamboyantly festive late-night landmark, and somewhere in there the taco bus would get pulled over for clipping a parked car, and even that experience seemed oddly easygoing. It was all so San Antonio.
One cool thing about the conference is the number of actual locals it brings in, both for the fancy parties and for the more casual workshops; if anything SACC officials might consider running two tracks of sessions geared to experienced cocktail-ers and those beginning to hone their knowledge. And it would be nice to actually highlight more of San Antonio's cocktail scene, perhaps as New Orleans does with sponsored shuttle buses, so that worthy spots like the Brooklynite, Paramour, Francis Bogside, Brigid, Hot Joy and Bar 1919 could enjoy some of the spotlight.
For me, the conference is just one more reason to visit San Antonio, whose strong Latino character and nearly European pace still offer the place a unique and pleasant vibe. "I feel like I'm not even in Texas," Garison said. "It's very New Orleans, or Portland, or even Charleston or Nashville. For such a huge, growing city, it doesn't feel like it. It still feels very familiar. Like it's just starting."
