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Cocktail king Hayden Wood knocks himself out for his work, as Helen O/Neill discovers.
I knocked myself unconscious twice in one day practising one trick," Sydney-based cocktail king Hayden Wood confesses high-spiritedly, "It was on the back lawn when I was much younger. I'd been practising with a liquor bottle filled with water, trying to catch it behind my back It came down out of control and hit me on the hip.
"I was a skinny boy and the pain went down my foot, back up my body and set off a light bulb in my head that took me to la-la land. My brother appeared just as I was waking up and said, '~at were you doing?' I showed him and knocked myself out again."
There’s no question that 33-year-old Wood has suffered for his art. His quest to perfect what's known as "flair" awe-inspiring bartending stunts involving juggling bottles of spirits, cocktail shakers and fragile glasses while mixing delicious drinks at the same time -has left a road map of scars across his face and body.
Wood has burnt his face doing flame tricks, slashed a cheekbone and come close to cutting open an eye. He taps a scar on his forehead: "One time, I pulled a sharp broken edge straight into my head. I've more stitches in my forearm. That was fun because I had a whole lot of kids watching me in a park while I practiced. I smashed a bottle, slashed an artery and blood was spraying everywhere. "I had a bartending gig on that night and I couldn't get a replacement so I bandaged the wound up. Gaffer-taped over the bandage and did the job before heading to hospital to get some stitches. "I have cuts all over both hands. Bottles smashing, glasses going -it's all part of the fun and games."
Injuries aside, those fun and games have served the New Zealand-born World Flair Bartending Champion (1996/97) very well. Having learnt the showy tricks of the performance bartending trade plus how to make 3Q-odd classic cocktails (and their hundreds of variations) -Wood spent five years touring the globe as an international ambassador for Galliano.
He left in 2000 to focus on Mondo Bartenders, a mobile bar company he runs from a warehouse in the Sydney suburb of Newtown, and which is hired for events -everything from film launches to private parties. "If one more person asks me for a martini bar at a James Bond-themed event I will probably self-explode," Wood says.
Since 2004, he has released several popular and award-winning books: The Liquid Kitchen Party Drinks, The Liquid Kitchen Groovy Drinks and Woody's Liquid Kitchen. His latest is Good Wine, Bad Language, Great Vineyards. "My latest thing is Australiana cocktails," Wood says, sidestepping a question about his most expensive cocktail request and explaining how he makes confits from rosella flowers, wild lime and quandong peaches. 'Tm not about finding 11 expensive ingredients and sticking a diamond in the bottom [of the glass] to make a $10,000 martini. That's not me."
What is him is continually inventing new cocktail confections, improving his palate with wine lessons and perfecting a Liquid Kitchen equipment range that will make creating home cocktails easy and fun.
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