Luis Hernandez has displayed his passion for the industry since 2006, his culinary cocktail style has been recognized in the industry for his creative use of ingredients and techniques. He began his work in the kitchen before moving to the bar just shy of his 21st birthday. He has been in New York since 2013 and is currently Head Bartender at Seamstress on the Upper East Side.

As an active member of the USBG, Luis earned the NY titles in 2017 for Bombay Sapphire’s Most Imaginative Bartender and Bacardi Legacy’s winner. With a huge emphasis on learning and education Luis has gone on to teach at the Bar Institute, USBG Regional Conference, Tales of the Cocktail, Bowery Collective and others as well as creating his own techniques to push the boundaries of normal flavor.

Luis has been featured in a number of publications including GQ magazine, Buzzfeed, Wall Street Journal, the Infatuation, Thrillist, Imbibe, Business Insider, Wine Enthusiast and others, as well as appeared in Fox and Friends, Cheddar TV and People en Español.

The Bacardi Legacy competition I recently participated in has been a great way to meet other rum advocates and to be able to push the boundaries of rum beyond the normal cocktails that people usually know (daiquiris, mojitos and the rest) while still making cocktails that are accessible to everyone.

Since I was a kid growing up in Venezuela, my mom would make desserts with rum, flans and rum raisin ice cream as well as my cousins drinking rum at parties, growing up Santa Teresa, Cacique and Pampero were names that I grew up with and couldn’t wait to be able to taste them when I grew up.

When I first started bartending I kept gravitating towards rum, the versatility of the spirit is something that I truly enjoy and I found it was easy to mix and enjoy when you had quality rum.

Rum has more versatility than any other spirit andit is rightfully the original American Spirit, as bartenders gain in knowledge, more rum producers reach out to consumers through social media and marketing and people discover their favorite rums, I see it becoming the next most interesting spirit in a bartenders arsenal without being tied in to Tiki or tropical drinks only.

More outreach to consumers that doesn’t only speak of rum mixed with coconut and passion fruit so that people see rums that can be sipped and drank as a highball, I’d like to see more rum companies holding tastings dedicated to the education and discovery of rum to dispel some of the myths out there about rum.

Pam Wiznitzer has been probably the most unconventional mentor for me in that it’s less about how to bartend and more about how to live as a bartender, there not enough attention paid to how we treat our bodies in this punishing line of work and things that we can do for others beyond making drinks and offering hospitality. Juan Coronado, David Cid and Colin Asare-Appiah are a trifecta of the Bacardi Family that have been a huge influence for me, David is a standard to follow in the rum world as to his knowledge and caring, Juan is just hospitality in-bodied and a perfect example of being a hospitable bartender even when without a bar and Colin is always available with advice and willing to teach me more about presence and of course the three of them are an example on how to dress. I think the important thing about all 4 of them is how willing they were to pay attention to a scared kid who had just moved here and had no idea what he was doing, they did that for me and I still see them doing that, hospitality and care all the way.

Open my bar, travel to Spain, head back to London for Bombay Sapphire Most Imaginative Bartender, Head to Cuba for my Birthday and see what else I can learn in 12 months to set up the next stage of discovery.

I’d like to see people tasting spirits, juices, fruits and learning more about the food industry as way to create better cocktails, we tend to pay attention to brands and style but not where we get our fruit and vegetables, how to prep them to achieve a specific flavor and a distinct style for ourselves, not just to accept classic cocktails as standard but to question them and to push for something new.