Morand Cocktail Workshop at Südbar St. Gallen

Distillerie Morand is known for its Williamine and its Abricotine, two AOP noble brandies from the Valais. As a digestif, with or in coffee, one encounters these specialties in many places - and increasingly also in the shakers and stirring glasses of leading cocktail bars.

However, the bar professionals who took part in the Morand Cocktail Workshop in St. Gallen on June 12, 2023, quickly learned that the range of the tradition-rich distillery has much more to offer than the two products Williamine and Abricotine. At the Südbar St. Gallen, Domenico di Cola, Sales Manager for German-speaking Switzerland, lined up a selection of products from the extensive range and showed the variety Morand has to offer for the preparation of excellent cocktails.

Before lunch, which could be enjoyed in the garden of the South Bar in the beautiful summer weather, the aim was to learn about the innovative specialties of the distillery, in addition to the traditional ones. Finally, at the cocktail workshop, two new recipes must be created, focusing on the range of Morand. These must each have two centiliters of Williamine and two centiliters of Abricotine, respectively, as a base. After refreshments, teams of two got to work and recipes were put together, balanced even better, or even discarded. In the process, very different approaches to the creation of new cocktails could be observed.

After all the recipes had been collected, the starting order was determined by lot. An important detail: the winning team was the one that convinced with both cocktails. In addition to taste and aroma, the appearance and name of the drink were also evaluated.

The team with Benjamin Juhasz (Old Crow, Zurich) and Sayedur Khan (Sheraton Hotel, Zurich) succeeded best in integrating the pear into the cocktail with the product Williamine. In the case of the apricot (with the product Abricotine), the two had to admit defeat only by Leroy Löffel (Südbar, St. Gallen) and Aileen Löffel,. However, due to the higher total score, the victory went to the duo from Zurich. The winners share a hotel voucher worth 1,000 Swiss francs.

But the other participants of the Morand Cocktail Workshop did not go home empty-handed either. Not only were the Barkeeper participants enriched by an experience of how to prepare cocktails with a wide variety of ingredients, but thanks to the goodie bag with a selection of Morand products, they also received even more inspiration for future creations.