Signature serve

Angostura would like the QPS to become this country’s “signature serve”; the same way that visitors are told they must have a Doubles and a Bake and Shark sandwich, the QPS should become known as the nati onal cocktail of TT.

The QPS was formally launched on June 10, in the atrium of the building located at #6 Victoria Avenue, the site where the iconic Colonial-style Queen’s Park Hotel once stood. However, it was introduced to bartenders around the world in January 2016.

Since then Angostura has gott en the QPS added to the cocktail menus of scores of bars and restaurants across the United States while also training bartenders on the swizzling technique that’s key to making this “refreshing” drink.

The same has been done at popular bars and restaurants in the greater Port-of-Spain area.

7 Year Old rum are two of the fi ve ingredients in the Queen’s Park Swizzle (QPS).

This, coupled with the fact that this cocktail was created about a century ago at the Queen’s Park Hotel in Port-of-Spain, makes the QPS an ideal marketi ng vehicle for Angostura’s range of premium rums, parti cularly in the United States where there’s a strong cocktail culture.

While the company’s Bitt ers is world famous, customers outside of the Caribbean are much less familiar with its rums.

QPS cocktail is part of on Angostura will soon embark on a similar marketing and training exercise for bars in other parts of the country.

The creator of the QPS is unknown but it was available to hotel guests by the 1920s at the latest. Angostura said its research also uncovered that by 1946, the cocktail’s “popularity had spread far and wide enough that Trader Vic, in his Trader Vic’s Book of Food and Drink, declared the Queen’s Park Swizzle, ‘the most delightful form of anaesthesia given out today’.” “Part of the allure of this classic cocktail,” Angostura added, “is in the ‘swizzling’ and the tool used to make this cocktail, a ‘Swizzle Stick’. Annie Brassey, in 1885, described her finding the tool in Trinidad (In the Trades, the Tropics, & the Roaring Forties), realized that the key to her cocktail was the motion, declaring, ‘[The] process is half the battle of the success of the compound’.” As guests sipped on the QPS, surrounded by décor reminiscent of the 1920s, Angostura’s Executive Manager of Regional Sales and Marketing, Douglas Henderson, spoke to Business Day about the drink’s impact on market awareness in the US.

“What we find is that we’re not a call brand in the bar; you don’t get your typical American or Canadian saying “I want Angostura rum.” We realised that we need to be on the cocktail menu, so the question was, ‘What could you be on the cocktail menu with?’ and that’s where the QPS comes in. People see it on the menu, think it looks interesting and decide to try it.” Asked if the soft launch of QPS in the US has helped increase rum and bitters sales, Henderson said while he didn’t have the numbers on hand, looking at the market overall, “The Angostura 7 Year Old rum, which we push with the QPS, is growing significantly for us but it’s growing off of what we would say is a small base. We would still like a lot more from there.” He added that the QPS “continues to pay off because it’s a point of conversation for our sales people; there’s a wonderful story behind it. This helps us to get onto the menus, which gives us the sales. One of the counts I’ve seen for the year so far, I think we’ve been placed on about 150 menus at different restaurants across the US.” Henderson said while the QPS is their “flagship swizzle cocktail”, all of Angostura’s cocktail recipes “and much more” are available on the Angostura app, free to download from all major app stores.

Business Day also spoke with Leesha Alexander, Angostura’s Commercial Manager for North, Central and South America, and the Caribbean (excluding TT) and its Chief Executive Officer, Genevieve Jodhan. Regarding brand awareness of their rums, Alexander said the company has seen “significant growth in not only distribution but also sales, so the QPS has been a strong vehicle for us.” Making a QPS requires some training in the technique, something which Jodhan said many local bartenders are lacking. Thus, the company’s “mission to train the bartenders in the absolute best way to mix cocktails.” “In speaking to some of the clubs and bars here, they asked us to come in and train their bartenders because whilst they know how to pour a rum and coke, they don’t know the absolute best way to mix cocktails. We’ve been working with the hotel school but we have to train the bartending community in TT to be more precise in how they make cocktails in general and especially the QPS, because it would taste different if they don’t make it right.” Regarding the June 10 event, Jodhan explained that it was meant to rally hotels, bars and other stakeholders about promoting the QPS as the national cocktail or the signature serve, especially in Portof- Spain.

“(This) will help us with our export efforts to build awareness around the drink, which was created here...

Just like visitors are told they have to try a Bake and Shark when they come to Trinidad, we want the QPS to become a must-have too,” Jodhan declared with a smile.