If you’ve had a cocktail with more than two parts to it on the Strip, you may have sampled one of Andrew Pollard’s creations. The Phoenix native got his start as a bartender in Las Vegas about 10 years ago, but as the beverage development specialist at Wirtz Beverage, you won’t find him behind the bar these days. Instead, his presence is seen on cocktail menus throughout the city.
“People are looking for the quality to meet the price,” says Pollard, who works with resorts and bars on training and designing cocktail lists and concepts. “Bar programs are getting away from the everyday normalcy. ... It keeps me busy, in a good way.”
Still, Pollard says he’s a bartender at heart, with experience going back 10 years; he’s even the president of the Las Vegas chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild.
The consulting process of his job often brings clients and employees through Wirtz Beverage’s Alchemy Room, a Voltron of booze-slinging that is part multimedia classroom, part full-service bar, part laboratory and part liquor store. It’s named such because “(We take) something that can be generic and make it something unique and extraordinary as well.”
London Proper
So the next time you’re in town and sipping on something extraordinary of your own, you’ll have to ask yourself: Did Andrew Pollard make this happen?
London Proper
If there’s one big misconception about gin, it’s that it’s got to be “Christmas tree” flavor, says Pollard. Beefeater 24™ gin’s light flavor profile includes hints of grapefruit and Japanese sencha tea (in homage to Beefeater founder James Burrough’s days as a tea merchant) along with its primary juniper flavor. It pairs remarkably well with grapefruit-flavored Stiegl Radler (a shandy-like lager-based drink from Austria), ruby-red grapefruit syrup, lime juice and basil for a refreshing end-of-summer libation.
This Friends With Benefits is powered by Beefeater 24™.
