“One Night in Bangkok” popup bar wins top prize from Chivas

The fifth Chivas Masters Global Final required the 21 national winners to return to Chivas’ origins at the Strathisla distillery in Speyside before culminating at Oval Space in London. 
Throughout the five days, Arron worked with a team of six bartenders in setting up a own sustainable popup bar and preparing communityinspired cocktail menus. 
Arron and his team created the winning bar One Night in Bangkok at the Chivas Masters Global Final in London and all members were honoured their blend of exceptional individual skills and infectious sense of team spirit.
His team comprised Angel Solorzano Chumpitaz (Peru), Martin Suaya (Argentina), Kentaro Wada (Japan), Yuta Inagaki (Hong Kong), Rick Marson (Netherlands), and Louis Marcpherson (Australia).
As the newly crowned champion, he has won an allaccess trip to “Tales of the Cocktail 2018” in New Orleans and joins the exclusive, closeknit community of previous winners. 
“We wanted to bring Bangkok to London for just one night with our bar and that’s why we created One Night in Bangkok. I love the community in Bangkok that brings together people from all around the world through food and drink – and that’s what I wanted to recreate. My team spent five days in the runup to the global final, so I got to know what everyone was good at and how we could work best together. When you have a good team and a good connection, you can achieve anything,” Arron said.
Arron started as a food and beverage trainee at a hotel in Phuket, where he fell in love with the hospitality industry. He joined a onemonth training session at the bar and became a talented bartender. 
His signature drink is The Grind, inspired by his mother and the stories she used to tell about how hard the farmers in Thailand work in the rice fields to provide food for the people – just like John and James Chivas, who grew up on a farm themselves.  
“It was another fantastic year for bartending talent at the Chivas Masters Global Final in London, with an unrivalled display of creativity and teamwork on a global stage. Arron demonstrated originality, skill, leadership and, most importantly, a real sense of community throughout the final week,” said Richard Black, global marketing director at Chivas Regal. 
“This was the first time we made our consumers part of the competition by giving them a chance to try Chivas cocktails created by some of the world’s best bartenders and then cast their vote to help crown the winner.”