Photo via Belvedere

Hundreds of liquor lovers and leaders from around the globe are in the spirit for Tales of the Cocktail this week. The event’s seminars cover everything from coffee to cognac, and some of the brightest minds in the industry are here to share their knowledge. One of these Big Leaguers of Booze is Claire Smith, Belvedere Vodka's Head of Spirit Creation and Mixology.

Smith came to Tales of the Cocktail on a mission to promote the brand’s new Lemon Tea vodka and to present at the Friday morning discussion, “I Love/Hate Cocktails.”  But like many of the event's attendees, she also just likes coming to New Orleans. NoDef caught up with her to chat about some of the finer points of the Crescent City's drinking culture, and her life as a flavor creator. 

You may recognize Smith from her appearance on Chelsea Lately in 2010, during Belvedere’s worldwide search for a global brand ambassador. Smith travels the world promoting, drinking, and creating flavor profiles, but New Orleans stands out in her mind.

“There’s a handful of American cities I really love, I’ll take any excuse to come here. That’s why we come early...It seems like people are coming earlier and earlier,” Smith said.

When the UK native is in town she enjoys the Old Absinthe House, the Carousel Bar, the Alibi, One Eyed Jack's, and Cure, off the top of her head.

Smith also notices an improvement in the drinking culture in New Orleans as businesses catch on to the demand for higher quality and less Bourbon St. inspired cocktails.

“I think a few years ago it was all about the hurricane and the hand grenade, and there was an underbelly of sophisticated cocktail bars that weren’t being publicized. Now, cocktails are so well elevated and so part and parcel of the experience,” she said.

When she’s not lecturing, she’s concocting the perfect vodkas. Smith said she leans towards herbs, spices, and aromatics. The lemon tea vodka she's here to promote is just such a mix, combining green tea, black tea, chamomile, lemongrass, honey, ginger and lemon.

“A lot of our flavors tend to have an ingredient that’s unexpected. There’s rosebud in our lemon tea, you can’t really taste it, but it’s a softening agent,” Smith said.

Although many of Smith’s flavor creations will inevitably find themselves drowned in a pool of sugar and fruit juice, she likes to savor the spirits in her own drinks.

“I would tend to drink things on the rocks, I drink things straight up, I’m less of a sweet, long drink type of girl. When we are designing drinks to go with the vodkas it’s a lot of on the rocks type of drinks,” she said.

Smith was a vodka lover before she became a vodka professional, and she said one of the things she loves about the spirit is its versatility.

“It’s often said that vodka is the chameleon of the spirits world, the most versatile. People mistake that for being neutral. I think that’s a bit lazy today because there are so many wonderful, diverse, varied vodkas.”

Smith also likes the atmosphere that goes along with the taste and feel of vodka.

“The mood for vodka is upbeat, sociable, convivial, it goes with everything, it goes with everybody. It’s probably got a greater application for occasion than any other spirit. Maybe gin could compete with that as well. There never seems to be a bad time to drink gin,” she said.

Smith seeks to squelch common the misconception of vodka as a neutral spirit.

“It’s a real skill to be able to get to the beauty of the raw material through quite an aggressive distillation process. We’re talking about trying to get something up to 95% abv and still have echoes of the raw material and delicate nuances. The imperfections in vodka are the echoes of the raw materials,” she said.

Although her business card reads, “head of mixology,” Smith has a lot of respect for the role of bartenders and believes the focus should be less pinpointed on the drink itself. “I think a lot of people prefer the word “bartender.”

There’s this internal debate on bartender/mixologist. I think mixologist is very much about crafting the drink, an obsessive focus on the drink, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all, but a bartender really encompasses the experience of the drink and the environment you’re in.”

You can hear more about Smith’s ideas on bartenders and cocktails in her seminar, “I Love/I Hate Cocktails,” on Friday from 10:30am-12pm. The focus of the discussion will be on whether or not all the discussion about making the perfect drink ends up detracting from the drink itself.