Best Bartender Team in the World Crowned at Absolut Invite

The world’s leading bartender teams just finished competing to determine which of them are the best team in the world. The finals of Absolut Invite, the premiere international competition for bartender teams, saw seventeen teams from sixteen countries battle it out in knowledge, skills, speed and creative drink mixing.

Mixing drinks in a busy, popular bar is hard work; the more popular the bar is, the harder the work. The staff has to be fast, courteous, consistent, creative, coordinated and good at communication. This is the environment that the world’s biggest competition for bartender teams emulates when it puts the bartender teams to the test. For this year's finals, seventeen teams of two from sixteen countries were selected through local heats, and battled it out in Sweden during three days of hard competition.

The teams gathered in Åhus, Sweden, where all Absolut Vodka is sourced and distilled.

The countries represented in the 2017 edition of Absolut Invite (in alphabetical order): Bulgaria, Canada, China, Denmark, Estonia, Hong Kong, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Puerto Rico, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The teams were tested in a range of activities: their ability to identify different spirits, their knowledge about spirits and the production process, their ability to work as a team with limited verbal communication and their speed and consistency when making drink. One of the last tasks was the Creative Mixing Challenge. Here, the teams were tasked with creating a delicious cocktail using Absolut Vodka. Once this moment was done, the points were tallied and the top three teams were asked to create their own pop-up bar inside Atelier, the brand home of Absolut Vodka, in central Stockholm, which in turn opened to the public for an ending party where the public got to taste the creations of the top three teams.

The party ending the three days of competition drew a large crowd eager to taste the creative Absolut cocktails created by the top three teams.

The competition was close, and the three finalists who got to create their own pop-up bar were China, Denmark and South Africa. In the end the Danish team consisting of Nicklas Jørgensen and Jesper Nothlev from HELIUM Cocktail Bar took home the title together with a year’s partnership with Absolut and a world tour with guest appearances at some of the best bars in the world.

Nicklas Jørgensen and Jesper Nothlev from HELIUM Cocktail Bar, Copenhagen, Denmark, won Absolut Invite 2017.

Absolut Invite 2017
June 14-16^th
Åhus and Stockholm, Sweden
For further information, please contact:
Jonas Gustafsson, Global Brand Manager Absolut Vodka
+46 (0)70 919 53 15
jonas.gustafsson@pernod-ricard.com