While it’s not yet on the scale of Fashion Week, Cocktail Weeks are starting to pick up steam. San Francisco has one, London has one, Boston, even Sacramento is getting in on the action. And now Portland has its own!

Portland Cocktail Week begins this Wednesday and runs through the weekend, coinciding with the Great American Distillers Fest, which happens here every October. Born out of the Distillers Fest and their yearly cocktail invitational, Cocktail Week expands the festivities to a full four days packed with seminars and social events, food and drink.

Events for the week include mixology competitions, seminars on such topics as ice, gin, cask-aged cocktails, coffee, and distilling, a series of talks for at cocktail writers, and fantastic parties each evening including a masquerade ball and a party at an ice skating rink featuring a bar made entirely of ice. And the distillers fest, of course, is hosting their annual Cocktail Invitational, an “iron bartender” type contest with some of the best bartenders in the northwest (you can read about last year’s cocktail invitational in this post from last year).

Portland Cocktail Week is organized by the Oregon Bartenders Guild and Lush Life Productions, among others, some generous sponsors, and a host of volunteers (myself included) who want to see this week succeed and become an amazing annual event. Take a look over the sessions and social events and buy your tickets now. See you there!