'Five days of celebration': The inaugural Melbourne Cocktail Festival launches in February

Despite Melbourne’s love of bars and festivals, there’s never been a cocktail festival in our city. That sorry state of affairs is changing this month with the launch of the inaugural Melbourne Cocktail Festival.

But why didn’t we have one already?

That’s the question that spurred Orlando Marzo into action. Marzo, an Italian-born, Melbourne-based bartender, took out the World Class Global Bartender of the Year award in 2018 and as part of his post-award “victory lap” attended multiple cocktail festivals and competitions across the world.

“It was great to see people coming out to these events and going to classes and I thought to myself, I can’t believe we don’t have this in Melbourne,” he says. “Melbourne’s cocktail scene is very good and has a really strong reputation in the rest of the world, so I thought we should have this kind of celebration that puts a spotlight on Melbourne and our drinks industry.”

Marzo has curated the inaugural Melbourne Cocktail Festival in collaboration with Worksmith, the co-working space and hospitality hub group where he works as beverage director. The idea was for “five days of celebration for people at all levels of expertise”, with the happiest news being that most of the events involve serious cocktail imbibing.

Those after insight into the state of the industry, the current trends in bars, cocktails and distilling and what the future holds for the cocktail scene should hotfoot it to Collingwood’s The Craft & Co where the MCF Symposium kicks off the festival.

The bill includes several of the festival’s international guests, including Sandor Katz, a world expert in fermentation, and Agostino Perrone and Giorgio Bargian from London’s famed Connaught Bar. Jane Lopes, sommelier at Attica, will also be speaking as will Tyson Koh, the man behind the successful Keep Sydney Open campaign.

More tasting, less talking is the order of the day at the Splash! Tasting Day where for $25 the wares of some great Australian spirit, beer and wine producers (Four Pillars, Marionette, Bass & Flinders and Stomping Ground among them) are available for sampling. Each of the producers will also be making a punch highlighting their product with ticket holders voting to decide the best punch. Splash! also features the debut of Four Pillars Gin’s bottled negroni.

A wide range of one-off events running throughout the festival includes Cutler & Co’s Eat Your Drink where ingredients from the restaurant’s kitchen inform the cocktail selection. Four cocktails are paired with snacks, like a rockmelon Gibson teamed with prosciutto and pickled rockmelon.

Other one-offs include The Gin Palace tracing the history of the martini, cocktail lab Byrdi making cocktails from foraged ingredients and Capitano hosting the “ultimate aperitivo hour”.

For those who like to choose their own adventure, the Bar Safari is the way to go. Every day of the MCF, 25 bars across Melbourne will serve a cocktail created specifically for the festival. Those wanting to commit should buy a Bar Safari pass which gets you discounted drinks, a digital recipe of each cocktail and entry to the MCF closing party at Whitehart in the CBD.

The Melbourne Cocktail Festival runs from February 26 to March 1. Full program and tickets at melbournecocktailfestival.io

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