If you happen to’re within the cocktail and spirits enterprise and you already know just one factor about Colin Asare-Appiah—and that may stand as fairly an achievement in an business the place he appears to be all over the place on a regular basis—you in all probability know his private motto. It pops up all through his Instagram feed because the hashtag #getinvolvedbruv. For him, it’s not only a catchy, feel-good slogan, however a private philosophy. “There are those that discuss it, and there are those that do it,” he says. “I really feel I’m a type of individuals who does it. It’s good to speak about it, however you also needs to take motion and do it and get entangled. Get entangled in no matter you’re doing. Don’t stand on the sidelines. Get in there and make change.”
Asare-Appiah, who started his profession as a bartender, is commerce director of multicultural and LGBTQ advocacy at Bacardi. It’s simply the most recent of many titles he’s held at Bacardi, the place he’s labored for greater than a decade. His tenure is a very prolonged one by spirits-world requirements. Most individuals who’ve held such a submit for thus lengthy would have slowed down by now, spending fewer nights out. However Asare-Appiah is remarkably current. Based mostly in New York, he nonetheless turns up at tastings, bar openings, pop-ups, and varied different business occasions. Usually, you’ll discover him seated on the bar in a relaxed perspective, chatting, nursing his drink. It seems to be like he’s simply hanging out. However there’s extra to his presence than meets the attention.
“I do it with the thoughts of offering entry for others to return after me,” he says, “extra individuals who appear like me. As a result of typically I’m one of many solely minorities within the room or in a circle. Now you see extra individuals who appear like me in these rooms. Slowly however absolutely, it’s coming.”
Asare-Appiah has been such a fixture on the worldwide cocktail and spirits circuit for thus lengthy that it’s straightforward to take him with no consideration. Currently, nevertheless, his profile has risen. In 2022, he and Tamika Corridor printed Black Mixcellence, a e book that includes recipes by dozens of Black mixologists. And late final 12 months, he and Mark Talbot Holmes co-founded Ajabu, the primary cocktail convention based mostly in Africa. The primary a part of the bi-annual occasion befell in Johannesburg and Cape City in March.
“It’s been a marathon, not a dash for him,” says Shannon Fischer, a publicist who first met Asare-Appiah when he was model ambassador for U’Luvka vodka within the late aughts. “For me, it’s been lengthy overdue, the popularity.”
“He’s been iconic to the Black, brown, and queer communities for some time. He already had legendary standing.” —Chris Cabrera
To Chris Cabrera, the nationwide LGBTQ+ ambassador at Bacardi, Asare-Appiah’s rising prominence is a matter of the instances lastly rising to satisfy the person. “He’s been iconic to the Black, brown, and queer communities for some time. He already had legendary standing,” says Cabrera. “I consider his function didn’t but exist. After the social awakening of 2020 and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, individuals began paying extra consideration. He’s all the time been doing this. Nevertheless it wasn’t till after 2020 that individuals outdoors the Black and brown and queer communities took discover.”
If you happen to’ve ever met Asare-Appiah, it’s unlikely you’d overlook him. He has an actor’s bearing and a heat smile, and he’s usually swathed in a brightly coloured jacket. His soothing bass voice pours out like hypnotic honey. Furthermore, his general aura is considered one of preternatural positivity. As Fischer places it, “He looks as if the mayor of the spirits neighborhood.”
Colin Asare-Appiah was born in Ghana, the place he nonetheless has family. On the age of seven, he moved to London along with his father, a psychiatric physician. He studied enterprise and finance at Westminster School, the place he met Douglas Ankrah, a fellow native of Ghana and the long run inventor of the Porn Star Martini. Their paths would cross usually throughout the cocktail renaissance that started in London within the Nineties.
A buddy recommended he take a month off earlier than starting a job at McCann Erickson, the worldwide promoting company. So, he traveled to the Greek island of Rhodes. When a piece lead didn’t pan out, he slept on the seashore for 2 weeks, earlier than touchdown a place at Qupi Bar bussing glasses in a membership. Sooner or later, the proprietor quizzed him, asking him the place a sure bottle of liquor was from. Not understanding, he stated, “It’s from the again of the truck.” The proprietor then advised him to shine all of the bottles behind the bar. Newly curious as to what he is likely to be lacking, he started to have a look at the again labels as he cleaned every bottle, absorbing every spirit’s backstory.
“I simply fell in love,” he recollects. “I liked studying, I liked storytelling.” He was promised work as a bartender if he returned the next summer time.
In London, he bought a job at Seaside Blanket Babylon, a trendy bar in Notting Hill. Additional work got here at Growth Growth Room, Babington Home, and Townhouse. In 1996, he teamed with a number of different mixologists (together with Ankrah) to kind the London Academy of Bartenders (LAB), one of many first fashionable bartending faculties. “We principally skilled the subsequent technology of bartenders,” he says. The varsity morphed right into a far-better-known bar, additionally referred to as LAB.
In 2003, he was employed as bar supervisor at Fifteen, a restaurant and social experiment by chef Jamie Oliver, who introduced in younger individuals from deprived backgrounds and taught them the restaurant enterprise. Closely hyped by the media, Fifteen was all the time packed. It was then that Asare-Appiah’s title began appearing within the papers. Quickly, Simon Ford, then model ambassador for Plymouth gin, requested him to return to New York to assist launch the newly revived model. Ford knew Asare-Appiah’s individuals expertise would come in useful.
“Colin has all the time been the host bartender,” says Ford. “That was his true talent. Might he knock the drinks out and know find out how to make them? Sure. However he was the man who was nurturing his group and he was the one that was greeting you on the door.”
By 2004, Mark Talbot Holmes picked up on that vitality as properly and invited Asare-Appiah to be model ambassador for his new vodka model, U’Luvka. (Holmes credit a Cosmopolitan that Asare-Appiah made him with altering his opinion of cocktails.) Asare-Appiah shortly used his innate capacity to combine with each “dukes or dustmen,” as Holmes put it, to shortly create a neighborhood of assist across the model. By 2012, he was at Bacardi, one of many largest liquor names on the planet. He’s been there ever since.
“What he has finished higher than anybody on this business is be the connector of individuals.”—Simon Ford
“For me, Colin is the quintessential model ambassador,” says Ford. It’s a strong assertion, provided that many individuals within the liquor enterprise regard Ford because the archetypal model rep: social, energetic, ingratiating. However Ford spies a extra excellent mannequin in Asare-Appiah. “What he has finished higher than anybody on this business is be the connector of individuals. He’s change into the embodiment of what he does. Colin’s a model in himself.”
Pausing as he absorbs what he’s simply stated, Ford jokes, “It’s remarkably annoying, if I’m being sincere.”
What Ford sees as easy appeal, nevertheless, Cabrera acknowledges because the fruit of years of concerted effort. “I feel that’s many years of labor, all the time exhibiting up calm and reserved,” says Cabrera. “I do know he will get pissed off. I’ve seen him pissed off. However his demeanor is among the most engaging issues about him.”
Asare-Appiah hardly wants extra duty. However when he and Holmes touched down in South Africa on enterprise in late 2022, the thought of founding a cocktail conference appeared a pure match. “I have a look at cocktail tradition and it’s punctuated with so many influences from Africa proper now,” he says.
He hopes Ajabu will join African bars and bartenders with their counterparts from different components of the world. He additionally plans to have a good time the legacy of his late buddy, Douglas Ankrah, by showcasing a number of variations of the Porn Star Martini, and he created a community of “Douglas Ankrah libraries” by donating cocktail books to bars throughout the continent. “There should not many Black males within the business who achieved what he did,” he says of Ankrah, who died in 2021. “I feel it’s essential as we develop the business to point out the breadth of range that we’ve.”
It could seem to be lots of further work for an already busy man, however Asare-Appiah believes within the energy of neighborhood. “You may’t do it by yourself,” he says. “Individuals need to enable you. Individuals need to get entangled. Everybody desires to be concerned within the journey of the success of one thing.”
