Organization was Jacyara de Oliveira’s downfall Sunday at the annual Speed Rack National Finals, which tests cocktail speed and accuracy of 16 female bartenders from around the country.
A bar manager of Sportsman’s Club in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, de Oliveira put the correct garnishes on the glasses but poured the Missionary’s Downfall rum drink into the Penicillin scotch cocktail’s glass and vice-versa.
“It’s the kind of thing, as soon as I hit the buzzer … I knew exactly what happened. I was like I (expletive) up, that’s all I could say,” said de Oliveira, who grew up in Lincoln Square and lives in Humboldt Park. She made those two cocktails, plus an Irish Cocktail (whiskey) and a Paloma (tequila), in 2 minutes and 26 seconds.
De Oliveira’s opponent Brittini Rae Peterson, a Los Angeles bartender, went on to win the competition and earn a trip to the Old Jameson Distillery in Ireland and a tour of the Cointreau distillery in France.
This was de Oliveira’s second appearance and her best place in the finals, which were held in New York. De Oliveira, 25, won the Chicago round of the competition in May at Thalia Hall.
Erin Hayes, a bartender at Lost Lake in Logan Square and runner-up to de Oliveira last month, won a wild-card spot in the finals but did not make it past the preliminary round after making a kamikaze, Hemingway, Manhattan and whiskey sour.
In the finals, the bartenders went head-to-head mixing cocktails on the fly that were judged on accuracy and taste. The competition raises money for breast cancer research.
De Oliveira, who said she spent hours training for this competition by practicing cocktail recipes and setting up her bar station in various ways to improve efficiency, said she hopes to be back in the finals next year.
“I think every year I become a better bartender,” de Oliveira said. “Hopefully next year will be the year I take it all.”
tswartz@tribpub.com
Twitter: @tracyswartz
