One of Imbibe magazine’s “25 Most Influential Cocktail Personalities of the Past Century” and one of The Daily Meal’s “60 Coolest People in Food & Drink,” Jeff “Beachbum” Berry is the author of six books on vintage Tiki drinks and cuisine, which Los Angeles magazine dubbed “the keys to the tropical kingdom.” Esquire calls him “one of the instigators of the cocktail revolution” and Food & Wine “one of the world’s leading rum experts,” while Las Vegas magazine cites him as “one of the world’s leading mixologists.” Jeff’s been profiled in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Wine Enthusiast magazine, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Florida Sun-Sentinel; he’s also been featured in the Wall Street Journal and Every Day with Rachael Ray, as well as on PBS Television, National Public Radio, Martha Stewart Living Radio and Radio Margaritaville.

“A hybrid of street-smart gumshoe, anthropologist and mixologist” (The Los Angeles Times) and “the Indiana Jones of Tiki drinks” (The New York Times), Jeff has co-created Total Tiki for iPad and iPhone, a drink recipe app which Macworld magazine calls “beautifully rendered and, thanks to Berry’s tireless reporting, impeccably sourced.” He’s also co-created a line of Tiki barware with Cocktail Kingdom, which Imbibe hails as “especially notable because it revives old styles of essential glassware that were previously almost impossible to find.”

Jeff’s original cocktail recipes have been printed in publications around the world, from Bon Appetit and Fine Cooking magazines to such books as World’s Best Cocktails and the venerable Mr. Boston Official Bartenders Guide. And now his drinks are being served at his new restaurant in New Orleans, Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29, which the New Orleans Advocate’s Ian McNulty calls “a treasure chest of the tastes and attitude that first made Tiki so popular, curated by someone uniquely qualified for the task.”

Jeff has written for Saveur and Caribbean Travel & Life magazines, and has conducted tropical drink seminars and tastings across the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. He’s an honorary member of the United States Bartenders Guild.

Seminar: Planter’s Punch is the big bang of rum cocktails:  most of the great Tiki drinks are based on it, from the Mai Tai to the Zombie.  It also has a 300 year history that includes Caribbean pirates, British nobles, the novelist Graham Greene, and of course the godfather of Tiki himself, Don The Beachcomber.  Join Beachbum Berry for three centuries of rum history and three servings of rum punch.  Come thirsty!