Full Name Cheryl Caple | Known for Writer | |
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Born November 19, 1960 (age 56) ( 1960-11-19 ) Azusa, California | ||
Cheryl charming a few bar tricks 2004
Cheryl Charming (born November 19, 1960) is an American bar professional and published author of 16 books on cocktails and bartending. She currently works as the Bar Director at the Bourbon "O” Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana, and in 2014 was named the New Orleans Magazine Mixologist of the Year.
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Early life
Charming was born on November 19, 1960 in Azusa, California, to Barbara and Gordon Caple. In 1965, the family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas.
While attending Bryant High School, Cheryl took her first job at age 16 as a waitress at a pizza parlor. This gave her the experience to obtain a food waitress position at John Barleycorn's Vision, a restaurant & bar in Little Rock with many themed rooms. A cocktail server called in sick one night and she was asked to cover the position— her bar career began. Later, Cheryl took a job as a cocktail server at the Cabaret on Kavanaugh Blvd. in the Heights. After six months, owner Lynda Johnson promoted her to head bartender. Cheryl found herself serving minor celebrities such as President Bill Clinton's brother and Gennifer Flowers,
Career
After tending bar for five years aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Charming began working at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida in 1989. She was part of the opening team of Pleasure Island. Later she transferred to the Grand Floridian Beach Resort & Spa where she tended the beach bar serving the rich and famous. There, her knack for bar tricks and bar magic earned her a job teaching those skills to other Disney cast members through Disney's food and beverage training program called Quest for the Best.
Bar tricks and bar magic was the subject of Charming's first book, Miss Charming's Book of Bar Amusements, published in 2000 because she had collected almost 1000 tricks. Since then, she has published a total of 15 books on cocktails, bar magic, and related subjects, with a 16th (Cocktails FAQ) due out in 2017.
After the turn of the millennium, Charming went back to college to study graphic design, hosted seminars at the New Orleans-based Tales of the Cocktail Festival, and began working as a freelance mixologist and cocktail menu designer for Brown-Forman. While working on a book project, Cheryl needed to know when the first Cosmopolitan was seen and mentioned on the television series, Sex and the City. She searched the Internet and emailed cocktail friends only to learn that no one knew. Since this was pre-Netflix and streaming television years she went to the Orlando library and checked out series DVD's to get her answers. She learned that the first time the Cosmopolitan was mentioned and seen was on July 18th, 1999, 2nd season, 19th episode called The Chicken Dance. Samantha orders a Cosmopolitan at a wedding bar and Carrie orders Scotch straight up.
In October 2010 Charming relocated to New Orleans from Florida. In January 2011 Cheryl took over as bar manager at The Bombay Club, which is known for their Martinis. Charming introduced a timeline Martini menu starting with the Martinez from 1862.
In April 2013, Charming took over as Bar Director of the Bourbon "O” Bar in the Bourbon Orleans Hotel. Charming has been an early proponent of the craft cocktail movement, she set out to modernize her menu with contemporary seasonal cocktails, recipes for the Bourbon Street clientle, renovate the interior, and introduce a live jazz program. The Bourbon O Bar is the first "fresh" cocktail bar on Bourbon Street. Many of Charming's innovations and "bar hacks" have been widely recognized in cocktail culture and cocktail media. Cheryl has been an extremely resourceful innovator in the cocktail culture throughout the years. She is quite simply known as the "Martha Stewart" of cocktails.
In December 2014, Charming was named New Orleans Magazine's Mixologist of the Year in recognition of her work at the Bourbon "O”.
In the year of her recognition, Charming created a newspaper style seasonal menu meant to be stolen, introduced the first classy Bourbon Street "go" drink made with fresh ingredients, offered a 12 local draft beer flight served in a muffin pan, and glued magnets on top of bitters bottle caps to store them on a metal tray (on the ceiling) above the wells.
In 2015, Charming introduced a bubble tea shaking machine to the Bourbon O Bar program which enabled the bartenders to offer a six minute shaken Ramos' Gin Fizz. In her research on Charles Ramos, she learned that Ramos went into the paint business during prohibition and the house he lived in is the paint section of the store today, so her first idea was to shake the Ramos Gin Fizz in a paint can shaker.
In 2016, Charming helped bring more Jazz back to Bourbon Street by introducing live Jazz bands seven nights a week and increased the whiskey bottle selection to 75 (with a focus on Bourbon).