Oyamel’s two-week Tequila & Mezcal Festival wraps up tomorrow, so we stopped by find out more about the two cocktails made specially for the occasion.

The Mexican Americano is a variation of the classic Americano cocktail; it does away with the sweet vermouth and instead incorporates cherry Heering and añejo tequila with Campari. The other cocktail, dubbed Black and Blue, has tequila as its base spirit, mixed with a combination of muddled fresh berries and mint. The drink, a twist on the rum-based mojito, is topped with Sprite and mezcal, a spirit similar to tequila but with a stronger, smokier taste. (For a mezcal-based cocktail, check out Bourbon manager Owen Thomson’s Los Rudos.)

“After a couple tries, we found that the smokiness of the mezcal on top evened out the citrus in the cocktail,” says Oyamel bar manager Dave Andersen, who’s been at the restaurant more than four years.

“We wanted to make a drink that integrated the restaurant’s concept of fresh ingredients with one of our popular drinks.”

Originally from outside Philadelphia, Andersen moved to Washington five years ago. He started working at Oyamel (then in Pentagon City) as a server and later as bartender. When the restaurant moved to the District, Andersen came along as bar manager.

Check out the video of Andersen making the Black and Blue below, and make sure to stop by Oyamel before the festival ends tomorrow.

Gina Chersevani at PS7's.

As local bartender Gina Chersevani explains it, her collaboration with Peter Smith, the owner and chef of Chinatown restaurant PS 7’s, was long overdue.

Two regulars of the local foodie scene, Chersevani and Smith had been friends for a while and often discussed working together. Timing, however, was never right.

“We were always ‘dating’ someone else,” Chersevani says. “Whenever I was available, he was working with a different mixologist, and when he needed someone behind the bar, I was usually attached to a restaurant.”

Last month, the opportunity presented itself. Smith needed someone to help out with the cocktail program at PS 7’s and, this time, Chersevani, who was at Eatbar and Tallula in Arlington, didn’t pass on the chance.

Not that it was an easy decision.

“I decided to come here with a little bit of a heavy heart,” she says. “I love Talulla and EatBar and I’m good friends with my former boss, but Pete and I share passions—we always want to do something special—and so I knew it was the right decision.”

Derek Brown at the Gibson.

Spend an evening tasting cocktails at the Gibson, and you’ll understand why Derek Brown is one of the people behind the project.

The bar—opened by Eric Hilton, the man behind 18th Street Lounge and Marvin, and designed by Brian Miller—has a retro vibe, with dim lighting, plush booths, and wood paneling. The nostalgic ambience is matched by a cocktail menu that harkens back to the golden days of cocktails.

“We have a base on classic cocktails,” says Brown. “The Sazerac, the Martinez, the Manhattan, the old-fashioned—all from that great period for bartending between the 1860s and Prohibition.”

Not that classics are all you’ll find at this speakeasy-style bar. “We tried to pull ideas from the whole gamut of cocktails,” Brown says. “There have been great cocktails made since the golden era. Even during the 1980s—one of the worst periods for cocktails, when you had sickly-sweet drinks—some good drinks were made.”

The staff at the Gibson, which includes former PS 7’s bartender Tiffany Short, also let their creativity reign loose with cocktails such as the Salad Days Sour, a reinterpretation of the pisco sour that spices the old cocktail by infusing it with celery and garnishing it with a burnt dusting of cinnamon and a carrot twist—“to make it seem healthy,” Brown says.

Todd Thrasher is a name many New York City bartenders won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

“How does a hick bartender from Virginia come up to the big city and knock off 9 New York City Bartenders? Shameful!” reads the bitter comment left by someone posting as HoofHearted on New York’s Web site after the magazine’s foodie blog, Grub Street, posted news of Thrasher’s victory at the regional semifinals of the Domaine de Canton Bartender of the Year Competition back in December.

One can only imagine what HoofHearted’s reaction would be upon learning that Thrasher beat New York City’s finest with an eight-year-old recipe. Or that he wasn’t even supposed to be competing in the first place.

“I was on vacation when a friend from New York City contacted me about entering this contest,” says Thrasher. “But I’ve always been petrified of contests—and I’m not a good loser.”

Thrasher politely passed on the invitation. When the friend asked for a recipe that used the Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, Thrasher, not thinking twice about his friend’s intentions, passed on a cocktail he’d come up with during his time as sommelier at Café Atlántico.

Once back from vacation, Thrasher was surprised by an e-mail announcing that his recipe had won him a spot in the semifinals.

“I called them to clarify I hadn’t entered any contest,” he says. “But they read me my recipe over the phone.”

With an unkempt mop of long, brown hair covering his eyes and a calm, somewhat shy disposition, Rasika bartender Jason Strich, 26, could easily pass for the drummer of a rock band. Unlike the unfair reputation that precedes most drummers, however, Strich has been getting nothing but accolades from patrons and fellow bartenders for his cocktail menu. That’s no small feat for this Atlanta native, considering that he took over bartending duties at a spot made popular by well-loved local cocktail guru Gina Chersevani.

“I knew I was coming into a place that had a reputation,” says Strich, “so I had to step it up and make sure I didn’t bring down the menu.”

Since moving to DC nine months ago and landing a job at Rasika a few days later, Strich has been honing his skills behind the bar. A month into the job, he already had a roster of original cocktails.

“Back in Atlanta, I’d help friends who were opening restaurants with their cocktails menus or develop certain drinks for spirit promotions,” says Strich, “but I never did anything very interesting until I got here.”

Interesting, like . . . ?

Founding Farmers' executive bar chef, Jon Arroyo.

Founding Farmers’ Web site calls Jon Arroyo its “executive bar chef.” The title might cause some rolling of the eyes from those already suspicious of the term “mixologist,” but, as Arroyo explains, there is truth behind the advertising.

“Spirits are an extension of the culinary world,” says the Arizona native, who prior to his involvement in the restaurant business spent some years working as an actor in Los Angeles. “One of America’s first contributions to the culinary arts was the American cocktail. People tend to forget that.”

Not so at Founding Farmers.

The restaurant’s cocktail menu boasts a collection of 15 drinks made with all-organic spirits and fresh produce, such as the Organic Cucumber Delight ($12), which combines the vegetable with Square One vodka and cantaloupe. Arroyo describes the cocktail as “freshness in a glass.” Also on the list: an assortment of staple drinks of yore, such as the old fashioned ($8) and the Sazerac ($13).

“Cocktail menus are about delivering a message,” says Arroyo. “What story do you want to tell your guests? For me, it was about reintroducing classics and making them approachable, while also enforcing the restaurant’s concept of ‘true food and drink.’ ”

“Every little girl wants to be like her dad,” says Restaurant 3’s bartender Ria (short for Alexandria) Freydberg about her early start in the business. “Much to my dad’s dismay, that meant bartending for me.”

Freydberg’s career began as a toddler, watching her father work the bar at the Riverwalk Fish and Ale House, a popular restaurant in Naples, Florida. “I remember sitting at the bar, eating garnishes like cherries and pineapple slices while my father did bar inventory,” she says.

She began working at the restaurant when she turned 13 and continued to do so up until her move to DC to attend George Washington University. She tried focusing on school and her studies for a while, but it wasn’t long before Freydberg found herself missing the hustle and bustle of the restaurant scene: “Apparently this is in my blood,” she says, laughing.

She picked up a part-time job working at Whitlow’s on Wilson Bar & Grill in Arlington while still enrolled in school, and upon turning 21 she moved behind the bar. Freydberg stayed at Whitlow’s until 2005, when the opportunity to work as a liquor-sales representative presented itself.

“I thought it was going to be a very natural progression,” she says of the job. “But I soon realized I liked being behind the bar, not on the other side.”