Focus on Luca Pirola, creator of theGINday

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Luca Pirola takes us through his journey on how he got the idea to create a vertical bar show, based on a single spirit.

My interview with Luca

Hi Luca, can you tell us a little about your bar background?

Hi Sharla, the beginning of my career was like that of many: when I was still in high school, I liked to help out in my friend’s bars. When I started university, I started taking more shifts at the bar, not so much to earn a wage but because I liked it. I have always liked to work, and in those days without responsibility, being a bartender was a job where you were at the center of attention. You get to meet a lot of people and a F&B role allows you to travel and have continuous stimuli.

Later, I had the chance to take a role with an organized staff and the obligatory apprenticeship. It made me aspire to a higher level and I understood that this profession was not a game. You really have to be determined to do it. Today, everyone talks about sacrifice and long hours, and unfortunately sometimes even that is not enough…

How and when did you come up with the idea of creating theGinDay?

We had already done an event called Agave Experience, the first national trade event in 2011 that brought people together from all over Italy; not an extremely innovative format but it was set up in a way that is now taken for granted. Even earlier, thanks to many other experiences, in 2006 we founded Bartender.it, which to this day is still the best-known and largest Italian community of bartenders from Italy and beyond.

In 2012, I started speaking with the brands we already work with for contests, consultancy and various types of support, and I came up with the idea of creating purely vertical events, where large and small brands could deal with an ever-changing bartending community, also thanks to Bartender.it. We started to change the way of presenting, with the product and its history at the center, not as simple as a prepackaged message.

When you pour any product straight into a glass, either it communicates something to you or, as it has been for some, it has nothing to say.

Where was the first edition of theGinDay and how was the event received?

Villa Necchi, in Milan, was the first venue: high class, both outdoors and indoors: a real risk for an event that attracted more than a thousand people.

People from all over Italy immediately had the feeling that something new had happened in our world, there was a great deal of attention and an enthusiasm, and it is still cited today as the springboard that the entire Italian beverage industry in the cocktail bar and mixology world needed.

The whole world began to look at the Italian cocktail bar scene in a different way, and not only because in Italy we eat well, we live well and we are good-looking, but Italy was being talked about on the international mixology scene. It is clear that the tradition of Italian hospitality has deep roots; there were huge bars that made the history of mixed drinks even before, but there was little social media backup.

*The four guys who started it all. Clockwise from top left: Dario Comini, Dom Costa, Ago Perrone, Luca Pirola*

You offer other events based on other spirits such as Spirits Experience, theWHISKYday, theRUMday and Grappa Experience. Why did you decide to offer separate events?

If you want to go into detail and test products, you can't go from one stand to another trying tequila, then switch to rum, then take a break with whiskey and then start over with grappa. Ok, you can do it, but the bartending community needed to understand better, to specialize, to learn, to talk to the producers… they had to dedicate the necessary time and space, as well as the right content.

Today, there are many who try to mimic our events, sometimes they so a good job and others don’t, but we should always remember who did it first. I also borrowed from international trends but I have always tried to put something extra that was my own; original and done in the most professional way possible.

Gin had a big boom a few years ago. Is the bar world still in love with gin? If so, why do you think so?

Absolutely, if you think about the bar world in its entirety, consumption is still increasing, every year, but the gin trend certainly has more depth than that of vodka. We are still talking about two giants of the beverage industry.

How many gins are represented in your show?

theGINday has been an event that has grown every year. Only in 2018 we had the same exhibitors as the previous year, and in 2016 we became a fair, and being a fair involves additional charges and more regulations, and therefore higher costs for brand participants. We presented up to 500 brands in our two-day event.

Tell us about theGINweek in Milan, how is it organized?

theGINweek was actually born several years ago, with Bartender.it we imported the idea of cocktail weeks, though not doing them by city or area, rather by category, which is something that should have had been quite successful but because of the Italian territory being so small but so diverse, it remained something that we kept in our back pocket and never really used.

Last year, despite our best efforts, we were not able to organize the fair due to Covid. Back in March last year, the Milanese cocktail bar community gathered in a solid group so that they could face common problems and, as it often happens from common problems, there came the opportunity to do something concrete, and here we are with the second official edition, where 60 bars, among the best in the city, are now busy creating something unique.

What advice do you have for someone who wants to create their own signature gin?

…To be an excellent creator!

What is the future of bar shows in general? Are you still optimistic about live events?

I have attended many events for bars and brands. 15 years ago, when I went abroad, I was often the only Italian and was asked why I had traveled all that way just to see an event. Now, everyone travels and knows everything about everyone, it didn’t use to be that way.

Of course, you have to be very attentive to the messages and stimuli of a market that is always changing, there is a particular atmosphere and you will need to be aware of your project, clean, organized, transparent and authoritative in the procedures and processes that lead you to do so. For every event, companies will increasingly have to make a choice, and so will the public.

Here is a video from Gin Week 2020: