The Motörhead edition is already stirring up controversy in Iceland:

AVTR, Iceland’s alcohol retail monopoly, is refusing to distribute Motörhead Shiraz brand wine. The retailer dislikes that the name “Motörhead” is a nod to amphetamine abuse and that the band writes songs about war, unsafe sex, and drugs but their main reason for banning the wine was that the “branding does inevitably promote an unhealthy lifestyle.”—Loudwire.com

Jeez, Swedes. I also thought both bands were more like a big glass of whiskey.

OH, THE BOUNTY from that cocktail conference!!!

• So. Much. Swag.

The winners have been chosen (from comments over here)! Find out if you are the lucky, lucky owner of a new Clamato bar mat or whatever else after the jump—and (important!) how to claim it. Thanks for swag-ing!

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I went to a cocktail conference last week in Vancouver, B.C., and all I got was this lousy column and this mountain of swag*:

• So. Much. Swag.

Look at it all! Some things that are included:

· Rubber Clamato bar mat!
· Havana Club hat!
· Bacardi ice bucket with leatheresque trim, with tongs also with leatheresque trim!
· Unbranded hockey-stick swizzle stick!
· Fireball flask, 3 oz.!
· Disaronno citrus squeezer (made of metal, possibly useful)!
· Skky Vodka unisex microfleece neck gaitor!
· Jagermeister wristband!
· Sailor Jerry dogtag necklace/bottle opener (always be prepared)!
· Unbranded pink compact with double-mirror insides and rhinestone heart detail (ditto?)!
· Vermont Gold shot glass
· Packet of Demitri's Ultimate Caesar ("JUST ADD CLAMATO")!

Also, there's a fancyish Disaronno notebook, a Domaine de Canton cocktail recipe book (hardback!), and two t-shirts reading "I [CAMPARI in a heart shape] Negroni" on the front and "Bitter Bash / Tales of the Cocktail on Tour Vancouver 2012" on the back (men's/women's medium, 100% cotton, red). Also, a copy of the Valentine's day Globe and Mail (unspindled).**

DO YOU WANT ANY OF THIS? Claim your swag in comments—one item per person please, first come/first served, 21+ only, and you MUST be able to pick it up on Capitol Hill during business hours this week.

*Also I met some nice new people (and fell down a flight of stairs), and I saw a dog with a cask around its neck and a small Seattle contingent.

**I'm keeping the January/February issue of Imbibe, two kinds of shrub (that's fruit vinegar, the latest addition to schmancy-old-fashionedy-cocktail-making) from Sage and Sea Farms in Portland, and a very cute miniature bottle of Angostura bitters. And, need it be said, the airplane bottles of liquor are already gone. First come, first served!

Last night's big Tales of the Cocktail Vancouver party featured an inscrutable mock wedding accompanied by kazoo, fake mustaches on sticks for holding above your upper lip, and a real dog with a little cask hanging around his neck. The dog’s name, according to the person on the other end of the leash, was Huxley. How did he come to be at the party? “He’s a rental.”

• Huxley was very popular. The cask seemed to be already empty.

The party was held at the Vancouver Urban Winery, a high-ceilinged, old-fashionedy place near Gastown. There were candelabras (with people painstakingly swapping out the burnt-out candles), lots of wine barrels, rose petals on tables... and a ton of cocktails.

This is Christina Mah, of justcocktails.org and the Calgary Bartenders Association.

She was making a cocktail called Earl's Garden—Hendrick's gin (the sponsor), sour apple shrub (shrub is fruit vinegar, very in vogue in cocktails), ginger beer, and Earl Grey bitters—served in 250 mL beakers.

Someone said, "Everybody says your drink is the best!" and she said, "Don't tell the boys that."

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"Spirited Dinners" took place at eight Vancouver restaurants last night as part of the Tales of the Cocktail conference insanity, with cocktail-paired menus addressing important questions like “Is Vodka Truly ‘Dead’?”

At the posh Jean-Georges restaurant Market, located at the also-posh Shangri-La Hotel, the topic was the Dutch spirit genever. This rediscovered predecessor of gin is pronounced along the lines of “yuh-NAY-vurr,” though you can also get away with “YUH-never”; revered London bartender Agostino Perrone was scheduled to be present to give the British pronunciation, but alas, he had suffered a herniated disc. The Shangri-La’s lead bartender, Jay Jones, suavely ran the show himself instead, including a drink called, coincidentally, the Stranger, involving Bols Genever, VSOP Cognac, cherry brandy, espresso, and Angostura bitters. He poetically described the mysterious meeting of ingredients, the darkness of it, as the genesis of the name. It did not, he said, have anything to do with the Billy Joel album.

In today's seminar sessions, everyone's all excited to see food-science author Harold McGee and super-expert bartender Audrey Sanders—two names to make eating and drinking geeks go weak in the knees—speaking on the topic of dilution (which they can make exciting if anyone can, plus, you know, there'll be drinks).

• Double-fisting in the ballrooms at the Rim.

The Canadian edition of the famous New Orleans festival of drinks is well into its big day of tastings. There's a lot of double-fisting going on in the ballrooms of the Fairmont Pacific Rim (so to speak), as conference-goers make their way through a solid eight hours of drinks, including:

· DiSaronno & Tia Maria Tasting Room
· A Mad Tea Party
· Hendrick’s Gin Tasting Emporium
· Around the World in Whisky Days
· 150 Years of Bacardi [in a hallway that looks like the brand was projectiled out of a hose]
· Havana Cultura

At this juncture, people seem sedated. (How much can you actually discern, tastewise, after more than a few tastes anyway? There are a lot of citrusy cocktails, too—after trying a couple of those, it seems like between the alcohol and the acid, now you're drinking, not tasting.) I tried a milk punch made with Gibson's Canadian whiskey; it was made with two percent milk, and the gentleman making it could not explain why not whole milk. I mean, it's not going to turn into a White Russian or anything, and it did taste thin. I also tried a drink made with whiskey and fig jam, which did not seem like the best idea and did not taste like the best idea, either.

At least one loud hiccup was heard.

Seattle does not seem to be much in the house—no Jamie Boudreau (he's Canadian! but he's probably damn busy at Canon), no Murray (who probably avoids these things like the plague, and why not, for he is king), no Anu, no bartenders at all that I recognize from home. Sniff.

Coming up: Havana Cultura, as listed above, which is a tasting of Havana Club rum (which you can get up here because IT'S CANADA and THEY ARE NOT INSANE) with Cuban music and, apparently, a person or persons who will hand-roll you a Cuban cigar. Yes! And goodbye for now, taste buds.

Tonight: a Genever dinner at the Jean-Georges restaurant Market at the Shangri-La Hotel. Rough!

This is what I'm missing right this very minute at this here cocktail convention:

9:00 AM to 10:30 AM
Coffee Bar
Star Sapphire Foyer, Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel
Presented by Amarula Cream, Frangelico, Irish Mist and Tullamore Dew

What is even better than starting your day with a freshly brewed cup of coffee? Well, at Tales of the Cocktail it’s starting your day at the Coffee Bar. Hosted by Frangelico, Amarula, Tullamore Dew and Irish Mist, these are morning coffees (cocktails!) that you don’t want to miss. From the classics to the nouveau, these will be sure to get you primed and recharged to start another exciting day at Tales!!

There are 97 more liquor tastings today here in Vancouver, and even armed with information on "How to Drink All Day at Tales Without Getting Too Drunk" (summary: eat, sleep, drink water, take vitamins, don't drink too much)... well, I'm eating a banana and having a cup of uncorrected coffee. I apologize for failing to live the dream.

Tales of the Cocktail is a cocktail conference (yes, such a thing exists) that takes place annually in New Orleans, and, beginning last year, also in Vancouver, B.C.

There are drinks, and tastings-of-liquors ("Hendrick's Gin Tasting Emporium," "150 Years of Bacardi," "Havana Cultura"), and more drinks, and a Spirited Dinner Series (dinners-with-drinks at Vancouver's fancy restaurants), and conference sessions ("Rum for All Face Off" [!?], "Punch and Beyond: Colonial American Drinks," "Less Is More—Alcoholic Dilution" with the awesome Harold McGee and Audrey Sanders), and more drinks.

I have only been here for six hours and I already fell down a wide, lovely marble stairway (at the opening party at the swell, elegant Rosewood Hotel Georgia—IT WAS THE FAULT OF MY SHOES and I am uninjured, if you care).

Here are some people met so far:

DAVID BAIN, bar manager, Uva Wine Bar, Vancouver, BC

David thinks of Tales Vancouver as a "coastal exchange" of cocktailness. He somehow became the wine director at a place called Fiction (now closed; the poetry!) at the age of 21, which he describes as a crash course in figuring out the whole alcohol thing.

He had his first drink ever at the finish line of a vintage car race his father was competing in—his dad was driving a Triumph TR6 from Vancouver to Portland, and he and his mom were the pit crew. During the closing ceremonies, he snuck off and pilfered a bottle of crappy chardonnay champagne, almost put his eye out opening it, and shared it with the other kids who were around. He was eight.

MORE...

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I don’t understand Erdman’s problem with that bartender's old diatribe. It’s really quite simple: don’t order cheap domestic beer, microbrews, or drinks with more than a couple of ingredients, always have your money in hand but not visible to the bartender, and, last but not least, don’t talk. Simple rules, dude. Personally, my real issue with the author comes when they get around to the topic of free drinks for the band:

We know, we know, you're gonna be really famous, but you're not there yet, tiger. Tell us you're in the band and which band you're in. By the way, if you are in a band and get free/reduced drink prices, feel free to tip, as most bartenders are also in bands! It's not like we don't know how it is. Oh, and our bands will smoke your band.

The first time I read that, I thought it said “our bands will smoke out your band.” Cool! Fair trade! Oh wait…

Look, I generally dislike drink tickets or band tabs at the bar. As a touring musician, it’s preferable to just have a case of beer backstage. It can be a real pain in the ass to have to wait in line for a drink when you’ve left the merch table unattended or are trying to change your guitar strings before your set or are in the midst of any of the other random work-related things involved with playing a show. I know, I know; it’s a petty issue. Free booze is free booze and we get to drink while we “work.” But here’s the thing: drink tickets aren’t really free booze if you’re tipping on top. I’ve been on tours where my daily budget is four dollars. That’s four dollars a day to eat and drink on a six-week U.S. tour. In that scenario, a tip on a beer means giving up lunch.

The author of the original screed also likes to point out that most bartenders are in bands, too. Touché. But I’ve toured with many musicians who also work in venues and asked what the protocol is for tipping on a drink ticket. The answer, almost universally, is that it’s nice but certainly not expected. I’ve seen many of these same folks pull the apparently nefarious action of “apologizing for sucking” to the club’s bartender when using their drink tickets and reluctantly failing to tip on account of their dire financial situation. It makes me wonder if the author has ever actually been in a band that’s played outside of their hometown.

For the record, I always tip on drink tickets. But this anonymous disgruntled bartender kind of pissed me off by making it seem mandatory. So let’s put it to a vote: