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Thailand
bartender Arron Grendon has been crowned
2018 Chivas Masters Global Champion
following a hard fought 5 day final.
Following a hard fought five day long
global final Arron Grendon from Tropic
City in Bangkok, Thailand has been
crowned the 2018 Chivas Masters Global
Champion.
The five-day final returned to Chivas’
roots at the Strathisla distillery in
Speyside, the home of Chivas, before
culminating at Oval Space in London,
where Arron demonstrated exceptional
leadership and collaboration to overcome
immense competition from the world’s
best bartending talent and lead his team
to victory.
The fifth Chivas Masters Global Final
required the 21 national winners to
showcase Chivas’ core values of
community, collaboration and generosity.
Arron impressed the expert panel of
judges throughout the five days and the
final challenge saw him working
alongside a team of 6 bartenders to
establish their own sustainable pop-up
cocktail bar and menu to excite the
senses of their most important judge –
the everyday public – with their
community-inspired cocktails.
Starting off as a Food & Beverage
trainee at a hotel in Phuket, Arron fell
in love with hospitality and the passion
showcased by the bartenders he worked
alongside. This led him to do a month of
training in the bar and he has been in
love with bartending ever since. His
winning signature serve, The Grind,
means to push oneself to work harder and
to achieve one’s goals. It was inspired
by his mother and the stories she used
to tell about how hard the farmers in
Thailand would have to work to provide
rice and food for people to eat – just
like John and James Chivas, who grew up
on a farm themselves.
Arron’s team created the winning bar One
Night in Bangkok at the Chivas Masters
Global Final event in London, and was
honoured as the 2018 Chivas Masters
Collective - awarded for blending
exceptional individual skill with an
infectious sense of team spirit.
As the newly crowned 2018 Chivas Masters
Global Champion, Arron has won an
all-access trip to Tales of The Cocktail
2018 in New Orleans, the chance to
travel the world with Chivas to inspire
bartenders of the future and joins the
exclusive, close-knit community of
previous winners. The winning Chivas
Masters Collective team led by Arron
comprised Angel Solorzano Chumpitaz
(Peru), Martin Suaya (Argentina),
Kentaro Wada (Japan), Yuta Inagaki (Hong
Kong), Rick Marson (Netherlands), and
Louis Marcpherson (Australia).
Upon being crowned champion, Arron
commented: "We wanted to bring Bangkok
to London for just one night with our
bar, so One Night in Bangkok was born. I
love the community in the market in
Bangkok that brings together people from
all around the world through food and
drink – and that’s what I wanted to
recreate. My team spent five days
together in the run-up to the global
final, so I got to know what everyone
was good at and how we could work best
together. When you have a good team and
a good connection, you can achieve
anything."
Richard Black, Global Marketing Director
at Chivas Regal, comments: "It was
another fantastic year for bartending
talent at the Chivas Masters Global
Final in London, with an unrivalled
display of creativity and teamwork on a
global stage. Arron demonstrated
originality, skill, leadership and, most
importantly, a real sense of community
throughout the final week. This really
shone through when he successfully
blended all of the attributes of his
supporting team to create a bar
experience none of the attendees will
forget in a hurry. For the first time in
the competition’s five-year history we
also made our consumers part of the
competition, giving them the chance to
try Chivas cocktails made by some of the
world’s best bartenders and then cast
their vote to help crown the winner."
The 2018 Chivas Masters Global Final was
hosted by Rhys Wilson, 2017 UK Chivas
Masters winner. He was supported
throughout by a distinguished panel of
internationally acclaimed judges: Matt
Whiley, pioneering London bartender and
founder of award-winning bars including
Worship Street Whistling Shop; Laura-May
Coope, Co-founder of Social Life and
social media superstar; JJ Goodman,
Founder of The London Cocktail Club bar
group, Craft Cocktail Co. bottled
cocktails, and Keystones Cocktail Club;
Bea Bradsell; storyteller and daughter
of Dick Bradsell (creator of the
Espresso Martini and the Bramble). Each
not only scored the contestants, but
also shared their insights and expertise
through a series of inspirational
masterclasses over the course of the
week.
If you fancy trying Arron's winning
cocktail, The Grind, you will need:
- 50ml Chivas Extra
- 15ml Fino Sherry
- 30ml Coconut & Black sticky rice
cream
- 5ml Sugarcane shrub
- 10ml Banana Syrup
You will find the ingredients for Arron's winning cocktail, The
Grind, as well as all the cocktail
making equipment that you will need available
from specialist online whisky retailers such as The Whisky Exchange
and
Master of
Malt
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