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We woke up thinking of the old joke about the termite who walks into the bar and asks, "Is the bar tender here?" That same question, more or less, was answered later this morning by Cocktail Grand Prix organiser Michael Menegos who told us with evident relief that, yes, the bartenders are all here. Forty-one of them have arrived in Havana (from 32 countries) despite Icelandic volcanoes and whatever else had been threatening to keep them from participating in the final leg of the contest. 

Their luggage, however, wasn't so lucky. One bartender discovered a heap of smashed glassware when he opened his suitacase. Several others had problems getting their ingredients through customs. (One contestant brought his own ice, so that gives you an idea of the importance these mixologists place on their supplies.) We can imagine that some of those ingredients must have appeared odd to even the most forgiving Cuban customs official. We've never seen a Buddha's Hand, for example, but several bartenders came here planning to concoct their cocktails using this "fragrant citron variety whose fruit is segmented into finger-like sections" (thank you, Wikipedia). Which means those same bartenders had to spend yesterday running around Havana trying to locate suitable alternatives. 

At the briefing for the jury this morning, Michael Menegos asked the judges to show lenience for those contestants deprived of key ingredients, adding that he hoped the afflicted bartenders would be able to turn the loss to their advantage: "Maybe they'll say, 'I intended to bring star fruit but now I'm mixing instead with, I don't know, fried chicken". Jamie Chesher, representing Australia in the cocktail contest, was fairly fortunate in this regard. He managed to arrive with all his glassware intact and in possession of all his ingredients except star anise, which he managed to locate without too much trouble in a Havana market. This all seemed to augur well for Jamie's chances when the competition kicked off at noon today in the Gran Teatro de la Havana. Yet Jamie appeared anything but relaxed as he paced the room, awaiting his turn to mix his three cocktails for the judges. Eyes darting heaven-ward at the lone functioning ceiling fan, he said, unnecessarily , "It's really hot in here, isn't it?"

The last leg of the 2010 Havana Club International Cocktail Grand Prix took place last night in the Gran Teatro de la Havana, in the recently restored Sala Alejo Carpentier, a palatial ballroom with clouds painted on the ceiling. Swallows flew overhead during the gala dinner, then the real swallows happened as the three judges for this final contest – Dave Broom, Ian Burrell and Tony C. – solemnly sampled the offerings of the four finalists. The bartenders had 15 minutes to prepare the three signature cocktails that had helped them beat out 37 other semi-finalists in yesterday's competition. In addition, however, last night's contestants were required to prepare a fourth cocktail using a bag of mystery ingredients.
It was a brilliantly fought battle. During the preparations Claire Harlick, representing New Zealand, told us she felt "terrified but I've waited my whole life to be here". Ioannis Petros Petris, representing Greece, said, "I feel like the Greek economy – a disaster". Giuseppe Santamaria, the unflappable Italian barman representing Spain, was as unflappable as ever. In the end, though, it was the UK's Marcis Dzelzainis who emerged victorious. His performance began with a variation on a Honeysuckle he called a Honeycomb. He used Havana Club 3 Años and several other ingredients that required him to name-check Pliny the Elder. His second drink, also relying on Havana Club 3 Años, included double-distilled calvados and chartreuse ("pleasant camomile notes"). Marcis informed the judges that this cocktail was an hommage to Serge Gainsbourg. (Marcis grew up in France, is half English and half Latvian, and thus he is someone with the confused pedigree of the consummate mixologist.) His third drink began with Grade C Canadian maple syrup and a few dashes of bitters and Crema de Mezcal ("very nice vegetable quality"), and finished with a dose of Havana Club 7 Años. Then it was time for Marcis to improvise his fourth and last cocktail of the contest. In the bag handed to him he found green chartreuse, an orange, some mint leaves...."So," he declared confidently, "let's do a variation on a Chicago Fizz."
In addition to the lifetime of glory that goes to Marcis Dzelzainis, the grand prizewinner of 2010, he took home a silver cocktail shaker and a bottle of Havana Club Maximo signed for him by Maestro Ronero Asbel Morales. But the evening didn't end there. Danza Contemporanea, the outstanding Cuban troupe just back from a month-long tour of the UK, took the stage in the Gran Teatro and shook the crowd from its cocktail-induced torpor. Then Cuban hip-hop duo Ogguere, joined by soul star Danay, got us all on our feet.
Congratulations to the contestants, the judges, the organisers and to Havana Club for making this 8th International Cocktail Grand Prix so memorable – and so much fun.

Yesterday we went looking for a bartender called Marcis Dzelzainis. He was the winner of the British leg of the coctkail competition and now he's the UK's man in Havana. A lot of hopes are riding on this 28-year-old's mixological abilities. Quo Vadis, the London restaurant where Marcis tends bar, is housed in the same building on Dean Street where Karl Marx once lived. Karl Marx is still big in Havana. We're not sure whether this gives Marcis an edge over the competition but we're planning to find out.

The problem is, Marcis wasn't around yesterday. He went fishing for Marlin. Was this his way of rallying the cocktail deities to his cause, of communing with the spirit of Ernest Hemingway, the legendary denizen of Havana bars who liked fishing for Marlin nearly as much as he liked daiquiris at La Floridita? We'll have to find out tonight, when we catch up to Marcis Dzelzainis and his fellow mixologists at the inaugural Havana Club Cocktail Grand Prix party atop the Parque Central Hotel.

I'm not going to tell you that spending a solid week drinking cocktails will make you smarter, but I certainly feel smarter after my week at the Havana Club International Cocktail Grand Prix. A good bartender, as everyone knows, is a smart bartender. Last week Havana hosted a flood of emissaries from the world's finest cocktail establishments, which means you couldn't swing a bar towel in the city without hitting a Mensa-certified mixologist. My conversations with them were almost as memorable as the cocktails they served me.

While we were waiting for the gala dinner to begin, an Australian bartender named Glen Hooper informed me of the monastic origins of various liqueurs — the Carthusian monks who gave us chartreuse, the Benedictines who gave us Bénédictine. (Don't ask me how that conversation got started because I don't remember.) Jeff "Beachbum" Berry, who I met standing in line to change money, bemoaned the difficulty of finding a good Tiki drink these days. Yes, in Havana you can still drop in to the Floridita for a Daiquiri (as I did several times last week), but you cannot, alas, go to Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood for a Zombie or to Trader Vic's in Oakland for a Mai Tai – both of those ur-Tiki bars are long gone.  Make no mistake: the 2010 Tiki landscape, sez Jeff, is a pineapple-strewn minefield. Should we doff our straw hats to those bars who have authentic, faux-Polynesian Village decor but who serve woefully inauthentic cocktails?

Should we deplore the nouveau Tiki poseurs who get the backdrop all wrong (antlers instead of blowfish!) but who manage to get the cocktails just right? Then there was the night after the competition was over, when I witnessed a heated 3am debate in the lobby of the Parque Central hotel between Mohammed Nazzal from Germany and a South African whose name I have forgotten. The former bartender was shouting in Arabic, the latter was shouting in Xhosa. I didn't understand what was being debated and neither, I gather, did the participants. It was something cooked up by Michael Menegos, who stood by filming this strange happening for posterity. And it was memorable.