Jewels in Cointreau’s crown

The French liqueur company, Cointreau is on the hunt for Asia’s new generation of female bartenders in its latest Cointreau Queens competition taking place in Hong Kong this month.

Beckaly Franks, one of Hong Kong’s most formidable female bartenders and mentor at this year’s competition

Previously held in the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu, the competition has expanded to include Hong Kong and Taiwan in recognition of the two cities’ burgeoning young female talent and will be held in Hong Kong’s Lily and Bloom on Monday, 11 July.

“Over the years, across countries, bartenders are always considered as a male-dominated industry, men hugely outnumbered women, a lot of the bartenders in the leading role are men, and people are used to mistaken that male bartenders are better than female bartenders,” said Maggie Beale, the organizer of the Hong Kong event.

“Many excellent female bartenders have to pay extra effort to gain their own coveted crown because of this.”

This year’s three Cointreau mentors include Beckaly Franks, co-proprietor of Hong Kong’s new raucous cocktail bar, the Pontiac and also the first female mixologist to win the 42 Below Cocktail World Cup. “I have chosen to take what is the most familiar thing to me and aggressively turn it into my career, my art and my life,” she said.

Also two of Hong Kong’s most renowned mixologists, Agung Prabowo the bar manager of the Island Shangri-La’s Lobster Bar and Grill and Antonio Lai are also on hand to help coach the final hopefuls.

Each team consisting of a Queen and two male bar backs must create two cocktails – a twist on the classic Cointreau Fizz which is made up of a minimum of 50ml Cointreau with lime/lemon juice and sparkling water and then their own Cointreau Creation Cocktail using a minimum of 40ml Cointreau as the base spirit

The four judges this year include the drinks business HK’s news editor, Lucy Jenkins and Richard Gillam of Remy Cointreau.