The competition was stiff (and so were a few of the drinks) in this mixology challenge! What a great collection of cocktails and mocktails we have…we threw bloggers a tough task to create drinks with fennel pollen, saffron threads, long pepper, dill pollen, juniper berries and dried pineapple, but each blogger rose the occasion and created unique drink duos.

Our first master of mixology was chosen through the public poll…congratulations to Scofflaw’s Den and his Pippali Pineapple & Beet Me to It! Your drinks were clearly popular with the imbibing public and we thought your recipes were innovative and really intriguing. We’d order them if we saw them on a drink menu.

The internal vote amongst our staff and the participating bloggers resulted in a tie! After deliberating and casting the tie-breaking vote, we officially crown Okay, Check it Out the second master of mixology with his Vir-Gin and Tonic & Spiced Butter Rum and Coke. Congrats! We thought both of your drinks were inspired and alluring – we’d love to try them!

We also have to give honorable mention to our runners up. Dutch Lovin’ placed a very close second behind Scofflaw’s Den in the public poll, and Hapatite was tied with Okay, Check it Out in the internal vote.

Both of the winning bloggers will get to choose between a mixologist sampler, a Japanese juice sampler, or a specialty sugar sampler as their prize.

Thank you so much to all of the bloggers for participating! We hope you all had fun challenging your mixology skills – we certainly had fun reading through all of the recipes, and we might just have to give some of them a spin at our own Cocktail Friday