Bacardi champions a global legacy

With over 700 entries to this year’s Bacardi Legacy Cocktail Competition, Roopak Chaturvedi, Director Sales, Bacardi India, gives a lowdown on how the contest is formatted and how it changes the lives of bartenders.Spiritz collaborated in the Bacardi Legacy Competition by conducting online wild card entries.

The Bacardi Legacy Cocktail Competition began as a UK competition, which was first won in 2008 by Ago Perrone of London’s Connaught Bar, and has since grown into one of the world’s largest cocktail competitions, attracting thousands of entries. Each national winner will travel shortly to Amsterdam in May 2019 to join forty-one others from across the globe in the hope that their ‘legacy’ cocktail will be declared worthy to stand shoulder to shoulder with Bacardi classics such as the Authentic Bacardi Mojito, the Original Bacardi Daiquirí and the Old Cuban. This information was shared by Roopak Chaturvedi, Director Sales, Bacardi India.

Giving details of this year’s winner, he reveals that Vedant Mehta from Bengaluru won the Indian finals of the Legacy Cocktail Competition, 2019. His drink ‘Limitless’ is now declared the Bacardi 2019 ‘Legacy’ cocktail for India. Limitless is a cocktail inspired from the idea of using sustainable ingredients and is made with Bacardi Carta Oro, Martini Rosso, Angostura bitters and a banana peel syrup. Vedant won the Trophy after a tough competition among 13 finalists that were chosen from nearly 700 entrants.

Creative Format

Explaining the criteria for entering this competition, he says the format encourages creativity and innovation with a focus on a promising drink! The contest is open to both long and short format drinks but the winning ones are the ones with the most appeal in terms of taste, visual appeal and innovative concept. “Equally critical is the element of replicability of the drink and that is an important criterion for selecting the winning cocktail,” he says. Tracing the journey of this year’s competition, Roopak shares: “Our journey for Legacy ‘19 started way back in early August 2018. On 5th August 2018, we opened our doors to inviting entries digitally. We received a whopping 700 entries over the next three weeks.”Once they had shortlisted recipes with potential, they conducted rounds of selection for finals with Regional Heats being held in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata & Bengaluru, only to finally arrive at the finalists. “For the first time, we also had a wild card entrant from Spiritz magazine collaboration. “Once the 13 Most Promising Bartenders were selected, they competed for the trophy on February 5,” he informs.

Judging Parameters

About the parameters for judging the entrants, Roopak explained the various stages of elimination. “A ‘Bacardi Legacy Cocktail’ is more than just a great tasting drink: it is a drink that stands the test of time and becomes established in the industry. He goes on to add that the competition aims to challenge bartenders from around the world. The idea is to find the Bacardi rum cocktail with the greatest potential to establish itself as a classic and join the pantheon alongside the Mojito, Daiquirí and Old Cuban before it. The competition begins locally in each participating country and culminates in a global final where each Bacardi Legacy National Champion compete to become the Bacardi Legacy Global Champion. It includes a fundamentally important promotional phase, where bartenders are challenged to demonstrate that their drink has the potential to become established in the drinks industry as a true classic.The global finale this year is being organised in Amsterdam on 20th May 2019 where the India Champ Vedant Mehra will compete with 41 other contestants from across the world, states Roopak.

When asked to explain the difference between legacy cocktail and an ordinary cocktail, the Sales Director explains: “Legacy cocktail is essentially a new innovative cocktail made with Bacardi rum and has the potential of being the next big Classic, like the Original Bacardi Mojito.” There are certain criterion, like usage of Bacardi Rum (any of its variants across the globe) as the base spirit, usage of a maximum of six ingredients, a unique name and a powerful concept along with commercial proposition that can stand the test of time and win the hearts of consumers across the globe. When quizzed about how legacy cocktails can enrich the alcobev industry, he says: “Through the process of Bacardi Legacy, we really see a lot of innovation and creativity. Whether or not the participant reaches the finals, the very process of entries – to regional – to finale means a fair amount of promotion of the new innovative drink. We see a lot of healthy competition amongst barowners today who really support their own mixologist to promote the beverage in new and unique ways. This infuses excitement, novelty and really fuels the consumers appetite for new innovative drinks.” As to the future prospects of Bacardi Legacy competition, he points out that it has been almost a decade and in these years it has grown from strength to strength, both in terms of scale and love from the partners. “In its 10th year, we only intend to make it bigger, bolder and better, he conveys.