When I was a child, I loved to read and draw. From building blocks to science projects, I loved anything that involved my imagination, and my mother and teachers started calling me “creative.” As I got older and began writing, my imagination grew beyond the boundaries of this island, and the minute I graduated high school, I began to travel, first domestically, then internationally. By the time I graduated college, I had studied abroad in France, backpacked around Western Europe, and I longed for a career which would afford me the opportunity to keep exploring this expansive world.
The first time I traveled for work, it was a one-night gig on Lanai, teaching college basketball coaches and their families how to mix cocktails, and then having them compete against each other in a cocktail competition. The second time was a Fortaleza distillery tour in Jalisco, Mexico, where I practiced glass-blowing my own bottle, and watched women sand and hand-paint the bottle-stops so they looked like miniature agave piñas. On the way home, during a three-day stopover in Houston, Texas, I managed to hit all five of Bobby Heugel’s famed establishments, and even made a few new friends along the way. The past two years I’ve had the privilege of visiting the Heaven Hill and Maker’s Mark distilleries in Kentucky, and the High West distillery in Utah, and I just returned from Hawaii island, where I helped to coordinate the Hawaii Food & Wine Festival.
People often ask me if I miss bartending, and it’s hard not to when I’m working a busy event, chatting up the guests, all the while smiling, hands flying faster than the speed of light. The challenge of controlled chaos was intoxicating, and there was never a night of work when I wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be. I was grateful every day of my life that I found a job I loved, which allowed me not only to express my creativity, but also would pay me to learn and teach about that which I was most passionate, all the while enriching my life and travel through a greater appreciation of the culinary, oenological and cocktail arts — bar arts.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and restaurants began closing — many of them for good — I began to fear if I would ever feel that sublime validation from any job again. And while nothing gold can stay, they say the secret to happiness is not getting what you want, but wanting what you have, and that practicing gratitude every day can lead to not just a longer life, but one of genuine quality. During this Thanksgiving season, I want to give thanks to my wonderful friend who believed in me enough to refer me to her old job, my current career, at a time when I needed it the most, and for my mother who has forever recognized and encouraged me to pursue my creativity, both in mixology and in writing, and who also shares my love of travel. If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. As I gear up now, for the final festival event on Maui, I can’t help but think, what a vacation my life has been!
The Road Not Taken
Ingredients:
• 1.5 ounces Old Overholt Rye
• 0.5 ounces El Dorado 5-year rum
• 0.75 ounces Filthy Black cherry juice
• 0.75 ounces orange juice
• 0.75 ounces lemon juice
• 1 long dash Angostura bitters
• 1 long dash Fee Brothers barrel aged whisky bitters
• Oil expressed from 3 orange swaths dropped into shaker tin.
Directions:
Shake all ingredients over ice and strain over fresh rocks into Collins glass. Garnish with mint sprigs and dehydrated lime wheel.
Alicia Yamachika is a bartender and craft mixologist, who currently is the key account manager at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits on Oahu. Follow her on Instagram (@alicia_yamachika). Her column will appear every second Wednesday in Crave.
