Industry Innovator

Aged 16, fresh out of school and debating his future in the education system, Steven Pattison landed a job at his local wine and spirit store in Belfast, to keep himself occupied through the summer months. Being so young he was unable to actually serve behind a counter but instead worked on his bottle to shelf co-ordination. Little did he know that he'd soon discover an insatiable passion and fascination for the wine and spirits world.

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With now over sixteen years experience working in different hotels and bars throughout the world, Sean Muldoon has established a very definite reputation as Ireland's pre-eminent cocktail authority.

"It was back in 1998 during my time working in Botanic Inns that I was first introduced to cocktails and mixed drinks" he says. "It was there that I first met Morgan Watson and it was he who would later become a major influence for me taking bartending and the art of mixed drinks seriously."

Sean left Botanic Inns at the beginning of 2002 to set up his own business venture: 'The Perfect Drinks Company'. Through this, he offered a one-stop consultancy and event bartending service (the first of its kind in Ireland) and contributed considerably to various establishments of that time receiving major bar awards: Bar Opium - Theme Magazine Award for Best Cocktail List (Ireland & the UK) & Zen Restaurant - Theme Magazine Award for Best Restaurant (Ireland & the UK), to name but a few.

He came to The Merchant Hotel in February 2006 as Bars & Potations Manager and has within that time built The Bar at The Merchant Hotel up to become a truly world class bar. In it's first year of opening the bar received the Guinness World Record for having the Worlds Most Expensive Cocktail (an original Trader Vic's Mai Tai made with the ultra-rare Wray & Nephew 17yr Old Jamaican Rum); the Theme Magazine Award for Best New Bar (Ireland & the UK); the Class Magazine Award for Best Classic Hotel Bar (Ireland & the UK), and has just recently won the Theme Magazine Award for 'Best Drinks Selection' and 'Best Bar Team' (Ireland & the UK).

On his bar management style, Sean says that he is a "highly confident individual who thrives on challenge and success". He is a great communicator, leading by example and understands the day to day running of a bar fully and the need for a great team rapport above all else. He is forward thinking and believes that hard work and attention to detail are essential in order to achieve positive results.

It is however through the work that both he and Steven Pattison have done with the Connoisseurs Club that Sean says he is most proud of. "It was originally set up based on something the General Manager of the hotel casually suggested to me one day. I took his idea and went with it but I'd absolutely no idea back then how big or important something like this could turn out to be.

'I unreservedly regard The Connoisseurs Club at The Merchant Hotel to be one of the single most important developments ever to take place in either the Irish or UK hospitality industry's. I hope that other countries will follow suit and in time embrace the notion of bringing education and training programmes such as this to their own doorstep, so that we may in turn all contribute to raising the culture of bartending across the globe".

Sean has recently been awarded the prestige of being included in the Theme Magazine top 100 most influential people in the UK drinks industry and has just completed Volume 2 of the Merchant Hotel Bar Book (available for download at the top of the page).