If you’re in the cocktail and spirits business and you know only one thing about Colin Asare-Appiah—and that would stand as quite an achievement in an industry where he seems to be everywhere all the time—you probably know his personal motto. It pops up throughout his Instagram feed as the hashtag #getinvolvedbruv. For him, it’s not just a catchy, feel-good slogan, but a personal philosophy. “There are those who talk about it, and there are those who do it,” he says. “I feel I’m one of those people who does it. It’s good to talk about it, but you should also take action and do it and get involved. Get involved in whatever you’re doing. Don’t stand on the sidelines. Get in there and make change.”
Asare-Appiah, who began his career as a bartender, is trade director of multicultural and LGBTQ advocacy at Bacardi. It’s just the latest of many titles he’s held at Bacardi, where he’s worked for more than a decade. His tenure is a particularly lengthy one by spirits-world standards. Most people who have held such a post for so long would have slowed down by now, spending fewer nights out. But Asare-Appiah is remarkably present. Based in New York, he still turns up at tastings, bar openings, pop-ups, and sundry other industry events. Typically, you’ll find him seated at the bar in a relaxed attitude, chatting, nursing his drink. It looks like he’s just hanging out. But there’s more to his presence than meets the eye.
“I do it with the mind of providing access for others to come after me,” he says, “more people who look like me. Because sometimes I’m one of the only minorities in the room or in a circle. Now you see more people who look like me in these rooms. Slowly but surely, it’s coming.”
Asare-Appiah has been such a fixture on the international cocktail and spirits circuit for so long that it’s easy to take him for granted. Lately, however, his profile has risen. In 2022, he and Tamika Hall published Black Mixcellence, a book featuring recipes by dozens of Black mixologists. And late last year, he and Mark Talbot Holmes co-founded Ajabu, the first cocktail conference based in Africa. The first part of the bi-annual event took place in Johannesburg and Cape Town in March.
“It’s been a marathon, not a sprint for him,” says Shannon Fischer, a publicist who first met Asare-Appiah when he was brand ambassador for U’Luvka vodka in the late aughts. “For me, it’s been long overdue, the recognition.”
“He’s been iconic to the Black, brown, and queer communities for a while. He already had legendary status.” —Chris Cabrera
To Chris Cabrera, the national LGBTQ+ ambassador at Bacardi, Asare-Appiah’s growing prominence is a matter of the times finally rising to meet the man. “He’s been iconic to the Black, brown, and queer communities for a while. He already had legendary status,” says Cabrera. “I believe his role didn’t yet exist. After the social awakening of 2020 and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, people started paying more attention. He’s always been doing this. But it wasn’t until after 2020 that people outside the Black and brown and queer communities took notice.”
If you’ve ever met Asare-Appiah, it’s unlikely you’d forget him. He has an actor’s bearing and a warm smile, and he’s often swathed in a brightly colored jacket. His soothing bass voice pours out like hypnotic honey. Moreover, his overall aura is one of preternatural positivity. As Fischer puts it, “He seems like the mayor of the spirits community.”
Colin Asare-Appiah was born in Ghana, where he still has relatives. At the age of seven, he moved to London with his father, a psychiatric doctor. He studied business and finance at Westminster College, where he met Douglas Ankrah, a fellow native of Ghana and the future inventor of the Porn Star Martini. Their paths would cross often during the cocktail renaissance that began in London in the 1990s.
A friend suggested he take a month off before beginning a job at McCann Erickson, the global advertising agency. So, he traveled to the Greek island of Rhodes. When a work lead didn’t pan out, he slept on the beach for two weeks, before landing a position at Qupi Bar bussing glasses in a club. One day, the owner quizzed him, asking him where a certain bottle of liquor was from. Not understanding, he said, “It’s from the back of the truck.” The owner then told him to polish all the bottles behind the bar. Newly curious as to what he might be missing, he began to look at the back labels as he cleaned each bottle, absorbing each spirit’s backstory.
“I just fell in love,” he recalls. “I loved reading, I loved storytelling.” He was promised work as a bartender if he returned the following summer.
In London, he got a job at Beach Blanket Babylon, a stylish bar in Notting Hill. Further work came at Boom Boom Room, Babington House, and Townhouse. In 1996, he teamed with several other mixologists (including Ankrah) to form the London Academy of Bartenders (LAB), one of the first modern bartending schools. “We basically trained the next generation of bartenders,” he says. The school morphed into a far-better-known bar, also called LAB.
In 2003, he was hired as bar manager at Fifteen, a restaurant and social experiment by chef Jamie Oliver, who brought in young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and taught them the restaurant business. Heavily hyped by the media, Fifteen was always packed. It was then that Asare-Appiah’s name began to appear in the papers. Soon, Simon Ford, then brand ambassador for Plymouth gin, asked him to come to New York to help launch the newly revived brand. Ford knew Asare-Appiah’s people skills would come in handy.
“Colin has always been the host bartender,” says Ford. “That was his true skill. Could he knock the drinks out and know how to make them? Yes. But he was the guy who was nurturing his team and he was the person who was greeting you at the door.”
By 2004, Mark Talbot Holmes picked up on that energy as well and invited Asare-Appiah to be brand ambassador for his new vodka brand, U’Luvka. (Holmes credits a Cosmopolitan that Asare-Appiah made him with changing his opinion of cocktails.) Asare-Appiah quickly used his innate ability to mix with both “dukes or dustmen,” as Holmes put it, to quickly create a community of support around the brand. By 2012, he was at Bacardi, one of the largest liquor names in the world. He’s been there ever since.
“What he has done better than anyone in this industry is be the connector of people.”—Simon Ford
“For me, Colin is the quintessential brand ambassador,” says Ford. It’s a powerful statement, given that many people in the liquor business regard Ford as the archetypal brand rep: social, energetic, ingratiating. But Ford spies a more perfect model in Asare-Appiah. “What he has done better than anyone in this industry is be the connector of people. He’s become the embodiment of what he does. Colin’s a brand in himself.”
Pausing as he absorbs what he’s just said, Ford jokes, “It’s remarkably annoying, if I’m being honest.”
What Ford sees as effortless charm, however, Cabrera recognizes as the fruit of years of concerted effort. “I think that is decades of work, always showing up calm and reserved,” says Cabrera. “I know he gets frustrated. I’ve seen him frustrated. But his demeanor is one of the most attractive things about him.”
Asare-Appiah hardly needs more responsibility. But when he and Holmes touched down in South Africa on business in late 2022, the idea of founding a cocktail convention seemed a natural fit. “I look at cocktail culture and it’s punctuated with so many influences from Africa right now,” he says.
He hopes Ajabu will connect African bars and bartenders with their counterparts from other parts of the world. He also plans to celebrate the legacy of his late friend, Douglas Ankrah, by showcasing multiple versions of the Porn Star Martini, and he created a network of “Douglas Ankrah libraries” by donating cocktail books to bars across the continent. “There are not many Black men in the industry who achieved what he did,” he says of Ankrah, who died in 2021. “I think it’s important as we grow the industry to show the breadth of diversity that we have.”
It may seem like a lot of extra work for an already busy man, but Asare-Appiah believes in the power of community. “You can’t do it on your own,” he says. “People want to help you. People want to get involved. Everyone wants to be involved in the journey of the success of something.”
