Mai Tai Madness: The Winners!

Last month I had a crazy idea.

What if I held a contest to get people to write about their best rum experiences and then picked the best one and had someone send them a bunch of booze?

That dream has become a reality.  After a few weeks of collecting entries, we finally have a winner in RumDood.com’s Mai Tai Madness.

At stake for each of the entrants was a chance at an entire kit of rum, liqueur and syrup for making their own Mai Tais.  The kit for the winner includes:

• Clement VSOP Rhum Agricole Vieux
• Appleton Estate 12
• Clement Creole Shrubb
• Trader Tiki Orgeat Syrup

All the winner has to do for a fantastic party is find some limes and they can Mai Tai the day away all through Memorial Day weekend!

All told, eight blogs submitted their rummiest stories.  They ranged from stories about amazing rum cocktails they encountered at special events to tales of woe at parties hosted by supposed rum experts to stories relating the bloggers’ journeys from simple drinkers of Bacardi Silver and Coke to rum-crazed lunatics, bent on owning and trying every rum in existence (the CDC suggests that it’s a disease that appears to be communicable through this site).

After reading through all of the stories and writing down more than a few drink recipes to visit at RumDood Central, my editor and I picked what we thought was the best of what was a great collection of submissions.

Keith, over at the Speakista, blogs about cocktails, spirits and bars in New York City.  It’s a great blog that I heartily recommend to anyone interested in reading some writing by an up-and-coming cocktail blogger.

Keith started off with rum as most of us did: poorly.  It was a spirit to be consumed in mass quantities and only paired with either Coca Cola or thermonuclear waste materials infused with sugar and as many artificial coloring agents as possible.  Rum was cheap and easy to find and guzzle with reckless abandon, just so long as you didn’t really think about what you were drinking.

As Keith’s interest in cocktails expanded, he picked up some good rums along the way, found a recommendation on how to make a daiquiri that wasn’t served from a slushy machine, and fell before the greatness that is rum’s classic drinks.

Keith’s travels didn’t stop there though.  He eventually discovered, as we all do, that a love-affair with rum leads to experimentation on a near collegiate level as we are all led down the path that inevitably leads to all things Tiki.  From the sound of things, the love affair and it’s sordid experimentations aren’t going to end any time soon.  I’m guessing that a few more bottles of rum and syrup are only going to help for a romantic summer weekend with those bottles.

Keith’s not the only one walking away a winner though.  The three runners up are all getting something as well (that’s a 50% prize ratio!).

• Matt Browner Hamlin walked us through an amazing cocktail from the Obama inauguration party.
• Hohenheim devotes his entry to a cigar cocktail delivered straight from Paris, France.
• Fiona at Gourmet Pigs writes about an experience in which she sacrificed limb (or nearly so) to enjoy a rum tasting at some quack’s place.  Clearly she should have sued her host, who now openly mocks her whenever she and absinthe are in close proximity, and is totally not trying to buy her off with a book.

Each of the three people above will be receiving a copy of Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s newest book, Beachbum Berry Remixed!

Thank you to everyone who participated in this contest!