We're almost there! The 9th Mattoni Grand Drink will take place in Berlin during the first weekend of November. Attending the International Bartender Competition hosted by Mattoni is a buttonhole for affirmed professionals, and a dream for young and aspiring barmen. But when an amateur becomes a professional? We asked our columnists to give us some tips about, and the result is a sort of handbook on how to prepare a $10,000 cocktail!

From aspiring barman to barman
Values and truths about a profession that needs to grow with consciousness and determination.
(by Antonio Motteran)
The world of the bartending is a dazzler for young aspiring barmen full of passion and will, but it is also full of shadows. It is important that established professionals give clear and sincere recommendations to young fellows who approach this amazing profession.

Passion
The bartending's appeal starts during childhood, as it happens for all the talented professionals. The ambience of the bar, full of lights, good food and coffee smell, with people's sound melting with glass clinking, background music and newspapers' rustle, is a fascinating ambience. Being passionate means to help this little world being the best possible.

Professionalism
For a barman is fundamental to attend a good school, to have a good teacher and to travel the world. And, above all, to try to understand the continuous mutation of the market. A good barman is abreast of the times, and young people are the first to perceive the world's changes. It is important to welcome them, listen to them and help them to grow up. Barmen who keep for themselves what they have learned, closed in their shell, have no future.

Sacrifice
A barman must accept the "mess-tin" with humility and extreme disposability. Aspiring barmen have to follow elders' directives and the elders have to be honest with the younger. It is not easy to stay in the hall, to portion a fish, to lay the table, etc., but with patience, care and a good teaching, it can be learned.

Career
Becoming barman means working to built a successful professional path that lasts, if possible, a lifetime. Being a barman is not a piece of cake: to play unfair means becoming no more than a "service giver".

Respect
It is fundamental for high-profile barmen to respect all the different mentalities and cultures: in the speech, in the assistance and in the tolerance of the customers and of the colleagues (particularly the youngest), because it is a hint of style and credibility.

Culture
A barman has to endow himself with a wide and diversified culture: from bar service to gastronomic preparations; from wine and spirits knowledge to the ability in preparing cocktails and assisting the customers. But it is not enough. It is also necessary to be able to interpret customers' expectations or to instantly guess when it is time to act and how. A culture that has to be passed to younger generations with love and care.

Attitude
To become a barman implies to be able to control one's own emotions, renouncing the haughtiness coming from the prizes won. There is no style when a victory obtained at a bartending competition lets your competitors guess a scarce fair play. And with youths the good example and the solidarity spirit is fundamental. Being arrogant with them means to disillusion and to frustrate them.

Belonging
It is important to feel part of a great professional category, stimulated by common ideals of job and life, where solidarity, professionalism and style are basic values. Something that is even better when on an international scale.

Charisma
For a barman it is indispensable to look at great barmen, those masters who have drawn and still draw the way of the professional bartending. Charisma is the leading value in writing the history and the culture of a profession. His vigour is central in giving new generations the needed willingness, determination and care to make the profession's future as bright as possible.

Three questions on the barman universe
Q: Which are the differences, in terms of approach to the profession, between a barman of the sixties and today's generations?
A: In the sixties the approach to the profession and to the clientele were very different. The professional course was much longer, and young barmen used to work in teams much larger than today's, under the supervision of a top level master, where it was possible to make professional experiences that no school could give. The clientele was strictly selected, with a lifestyle and a behaviour very elegant and competent.
Today the clientele, the behaviour and the style have changed. Moreover, the working conditions have changed too: the personnel restriction (cost control) goes side by side with an inadequate turnover of those famous masters. But young barmen have a chance to occupy responsible positions even if they often do not have the necessary skills that one gains only with time and experience.

Q: What would you recommend to young people who want to become barmen?
A: First of all they should work with great will and spirit of sacrifice, they should study with care and attend to training courses. If possible, they should work side by side with an experienced barman. Moreover, it is indispensable to spend at least three or four years abroad, not only to learn foreign languages - very useful in this profession - but also to learn the art of welcoming foreign guests, that are the heart of every country's tourist economy.

Q: Do you think that customers are aware of these great changes that the bartending world is living?
A: The truth is that the clientele itself, consciously or not, is changing the bartending world. Tastes and trends are changing, stimulated by new products and cocktails put on the market by our frenetic times. We consume and burn everything in a hurry, too much hurry. The bar is a meeting place, where one should socialize and relax: it is one of the pleasure-domes that life offers and we should enjoy it with consciousness… sip by sip!

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