A new offering from Memphis tour standby, Backbeat Tours, the Cocktail Tour definitely has potential to be awesome. Right now, I think it's fun, but needs a little smoothing out.
Admittedly, we only took about 2/3 of the tour, as our tour guide was about 15-20 minutes late and we had somewhere to be, so we left a bit early.
Our tour went to three bars (total, we missed one), and at each one we were told about some signature cocktails we could order (drinks aren't included in the ticket price). Our tour guide, Memphis Jones I believe, was super nice and informative. He stopped along the way between bars to point out important historical facts and to share some info.
Small problems with this tour: Memphis was doing it for the first time, and he was clearly not a cocktail expert. He was suuuper nice and knew a lot about history, but not a ton specific to drinks. Again, he's new and clearly cared a lot about giving us a good tour, so hopefully his knowledge will increase over time.
At each bar, we were given a list of signature cocktails that would be good to order there. Most were old Memphis cocktails that were popular at the turn of the century. The guide went in with a list of cocktails, gave it to the bartenders, and asked them to make them. This went smoothly at some stops, particularly places with extensive cocktail lists already.
At some of the bars, though, it was the bartenders knew we were coming, but not that they were going to be asked to create some vintage cocktails. In fact, at one place, they had to substitute the ingredients in most of the drinks, meaning we got something totally different than what we ordered. I also got the impression that some of the bartenders were slightly annoyed by a guide coming in with a list of drinks they weren't familiar with.
I kind of expected this tour to go more to places that were famous for a certain drink, not to just random bars and ask them to create certain drinks, so this was a little weird.
In all, I think some of these kinks can be worked out as the tour gets its footing.
Either way, the guide was nice and we had some tasty libations! I liked the ones I got that were made properly, particularly the off-menu suggestions at Magestic Grille. read more
