Innovative Hotel Bar Concepts Revolve Around Spirits 

Jean-Pierre Etcheberrigaray, vice president, food and beverage, for The Americas InterContinental Hotel Group, and his team have embarked on a creative sprint to create new and innovative bar concepts for their flagship brand InterContinental Hotels. In the spring of 2005 they introduced the XO Bar at the new InterContinental Hotel in Atlanta. The bar specializes in ultra-premium cognacs and has been a resounding success.

Innovation
    “Tell me who you are, where you are, and how you are, and I will tell you what to eat and where to eat it,” Etcheberrigaray says. “The key to performance in the food and beverage area is knowing your audience and clients and designing a multi-solution concept that meets all needs.”
    Etcheberrigaray has served as general manager at Inter-Continental Hotels in Toronto, Mayfair London, Cartagena, Rio de Janeiro and Valencia. He has received numerous industry awards including recognition for creating three 5-diamond restaurants and is the creator of many trend-setting concepts. With experience on four continents and fluency in four languages. He’s earned his stripes and has now taken on groundbreaking bar and lounge concepts. René van Camp was appointed corporate beverage director in March, 2006 and is responsible for overseeing the Corporate Beverage Projects, to include IHG’s World Class Beverage Program for all owned and managed hotels of the InterContinental Hotels Group.
    Two new bar and lounge models are being presented at the grand opening this winter of the InterContinental Hotel Boston. This new hotel will offer an international presentation of cocktails and dining, with the aim of recreating the feel of an old-fashioned European villa.
    Open 24/7, the food and beverage offerings are anchored by the hotel’s signature restaurant featuring upscale French brasserie country dining. Alternative cuisine includes a New England raw bar and fresh sushi.
    Signature and exotic cocktails will be served in multiple, distinct venues, to include a warm and inviting library lounge, a rum bar to be called RumBa with a double-sided fireplace, a private Champagne bar, and an outdoor café featuring Margarita and tequila cocktails overlooking Boston Harbor.

Mais Oui!
    The XO Bar at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Atlanta specializes in ultra-premium cognacs. Buckhead’s hottest and most stunning watering hole is home to an amazing collection of vintage cognacs and armagnacs ranging from $1,000 to $6,000 per bottle, including Louis XIII Hennessy Timeless and the soon to be launched Hennessy Elipse. 
    “Premium” would be an understatemen. With more than 45 choices, none are designated lower than X.O., the highest rating in the spirit’s three-tier system.
    Etcheberrigaray, a one-time professional cognac taster,  describes the top designation of his favorite spirit: “X.O. is sexy, it’s fresh. It’s love and kisses. It’s extremely old.” He is definitively on to something here; sales of the spirit have escalated by more than 10 percent in the United States for each of the past two years, according to Impact, a beverage trade journal. Americans bought 43 percent of all the cognac sold worldwide in 2005, up from 15 percent in 1995.
    When people ask for advice, bartender Cornelious Robinson will steer them to a $26 shot of Hennessy X.O. for their first taste of an ultra-premium cognac. But he also mentions the $375-a-shot Hardy Perfection and pulls down the bottle for emphasis. It is a hand-blown, clear decanter resting on a cumulus of blue crystal.
    “See how light the cognac is,” Robinson says, “It’s as if it’s floating on a cloud.” That “lightness” is a characteristic that professional cognac tasters seek. Called “rancio” in the slang of the Charentes region, it is that paradoxically fresh flavor of age. The burn of the distilled alcohol and the oaky flavor of the cask have given way to an easy roundness on the palate and an explosion of invigorating secondary flavors.
    The sad fact of cognac connoisseurship is that once you upgrade you can’t go back. Most customers spending $97 for a shot of Kelt Petra or $175 for Remy Martin Louis XIII will want their drink straight up; however, there has been a small but newsworthy trend of attention-grabbing ultra-premium cocktails.
    Donald Trump toasted the winner of “The Apprentice” with a drink called You’re Hired, consisting of L’Espirit de Courvoisier, Chateau d’Yquem sauternes and Dom Perignon. The XO Bar has its own version; this $550 cocktail consists of a shot of Hennessy Timeless blended with Chambord and topped with a splash of Dom Perignon.

Note: Excerpts for this article came from John Kessler’s “Extravagant Sipping” in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution