Sham Cocktail Competition?

[brinza]

I am totally baffled by this. A Cocktail Competition sponsored by Drambuie and connected with Tales of the Cocktail was announced, recipes were collected, and it has dropped off the radar. Not to be confused with the Drambuie "Nail or Fail" Bartender Showdown competition (which was an in-person event) or the Drambuie Tales on Tap competition (which is for draft cocktails), this was an online entry competition called simply Tales of the Cocktail Bartender Showdown. The prize was an all-expense-paid trip for two to the 2012 TOTC, including two Founders Day Passes and $500 cash. Here is a link to the TOTC page which describes the contest and lays out the rules:

http://www.talesofth...wn-competition/

An e-mail about the contest was sent out to those on the TOTC mailing list back on March 6. Many eGulleters probably received it. The deadline for the contest was May 8. A reminder e-mail was sent out on May 8 as well. I submitted a few recipes around April 26. I received an acknowledgement message for each submission. Since the deadline was in early May for a prize for a trip in late July, I expected to see an announcement of the winner some time in late June or early July. To be honest, I really didn't expect to win myself, but I did expect to see a winner announced and the winning recipe posted somewhere. I went back and looked at those confirmation e-mails and saw that they originated from an actual person's address (rather than an automatic no-reply address), so I contacted this person to ask if I had missed the announcement of the winner. I received a prompt reply on July 8 that the winner would be announed "next week" which would mean some time between July 15 and July 21 (not a lot of advanced notice!). Still nothing. I've gone through all of my e-mails since the deadline date (in case I missed anything) and have combed both the TOTC and Drambuie websites neither of which make any mention of this contest. A google search turned up several mirrors of the contest entry page and a social networking site with numerous tweets up to the May 8 deadline reminding people of the impending deadline for the contest. After that date, the tweets go silent.

Has anyone else here entered this contest? Does anyone have any idea what is going on or know the winner? I would honestly be happy if they just sent out a notice to everyone along the lines of "Oops, we screwed up and the contest rules were incomplete so we can't award the prize," or "We didn't receive enough entries for a viable contest pool," or "We received too many entries, got overwhelmed, and ran out of time." I'd even accept "We didn't feel that any of the recipes were good enough to put our name on them." Anything. The cynic in me wants to say that there never was any prize and that this was a subterfuge for the purpose of recipe harvesting. Either that or they quietly informed the winner and told no one else, which would be almost as shady, IMO. If they announced it today, how many people could just drop everything and go tomorrow? All of the other cocktail competition results (including at least two others sponsored by Drambuie) are being hyped to no end, yet this one is going curiously unmentioned as if they want everyone to forget about it. The whole point of these contests is publicity for the sponsor, so this makes no sense.

I attended Tales last year and it was one of the best experiences I've ever had, and Drambuie is one of my favorite liqueurs (which is why I though it would be fun to create cocktails around it). But this thing has me really ticked off. If anyone could shed any light on it I would greatly appreciate it.

[tanstaafl2]

Since it appears to be on the TOTC website might be time to try to ask them about what happened to it since you got no help from the direct contact.