Chartreuse sweet sixteen cocktail competition at the Doheny (2 of 4)

A Chartreuse monk prepares the healing elixir (photo from Chartreuse)

Click here for Part One of Chartreuse Competition: Arrival

Part Two: Chorus

Marcos Tello, founder of The Sporting Life, took over the Doheny for the first Los Angeles Chartreuse Cocktail Contest, a friendly coup of Cedd Moses’s members-only club hidden in the Petroleum Building, a grand edifice designed by Raymond Kennedy for Meyer & Holler in 1924, the same architects that gave Sid Grauman the Chinese and Egyptian Theaters. Named after the famed L.A. oil tycoon E. L. Doheny, whom Upton Sinclair based his novel Oil! upon, and who was subsequently realized by Daniel Day Lewis’s OscarTM-winning performance in There Will Be Blood, the club’s membership is expensive: $2,750 for the initiation fee and $2,200 annually to set foot inside this shrine to exclusivity and wealth (a portion of the fees go to charity). Fortunately, Tello and most of the contestants have served time on this liquor derrick, so dues-be-damned. Had I known five times my yearly “salary” is the entry requirement, I would have at least shaved.

Located in the back of a parking garage, the Doheny is enclosed in near-darkness; the only entrance, well-guarded (apparently they have fingerprint scanners), leads past a climate-controlled cabinet of vintage wines and ornate alcohol containers regarded almost as a Saint’s reliquary. Daylight spills in through a smoking patio’s skylight, which was formerly part of a greenhouse. A small side room with thick black curtains will separate the wizards from the judges. This event gives me the vibe of an after-school brawl with finger sandwiches, pasta salad, and a punch bowl for the fans. Normal Doheny restrictions against cel phone and camera use are lifted for the battle, and although my crappy Canon Powershot crapped out craptastically, I weasel my way to a front row stool, edging off a legitimate journalist from the LA Weekly and semi-intentionally getting in the way of her iPhone snaps.

The two wells are stocked with nearly every spirit an accomplished alchemist would want or need, though I somehow doubt they have Red Bulls in the fridge or cheap Coke from a hose. Tello hit a farmer's market and a Bristol Farms before the match, so everything from fresh peaches and plums to tarragon and thyme await activation in ice-embedded bowls. Although the judges will base their decisions on taste, aesthetics still count; I tot up at least a dozen different glasses glinting like antique weaponry in the early afternoon light. An enviable setup realized by Doheny’s general manager, Steve Livigni, who makes sure each challenger is satisfied with the ingredients, and even diplomatically allows (with some trepidation) access to the top shelf scotches and Armagnacs.

The event is sponsored by Cattani Imports, who provided the Chartreuse, and the aforementioned Sporting Life, which Tello formed last year to advance cocktail artistry and bartender association, especially promoting the United States Bartender’s Guild, or USBG.

After idle chatter and introductions, though, I see people licking their lips, scoping out the competition like horse handicappers, checking to see who just woke from a wicked night shift or needs some hair o’ the dog. Eric Alperin from Varnish, the only one in a hat, is cracking jokes and throwing his arm around shoulders, then videotaping every angle of the bar with a predatory expression. I’m a chalk player, I put Alperin in the Final Four. Though some of these other chefs, like Chris from Blueprint Cocktail, Christina of nearby Rivera, Brian at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills, or any of the bald guys, mohawked guys, or tattooed guys and gals look like they could spin liquid gold from a Trader Joe’s sample table and pruno.

Whoa, what’s in this punch again?

Click here for Part Three of Chartreuse Competition: Clash

Click here for Part Four of the Chartreuse Competition: Resolution

For more info: Cattani Imports