Christina Hendricks (right, as Joan Halloway in Mad Men) reveals the secrets to hosting a good party. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied
EARLIER this year we met up with Mad Men actress Christina Hendricks in Rio de Janeiro.
She was there launching a campaign for Johnnie Walker Blue Label and we were attending Diageo World Class, which is basically the World Cup of bartending. For a week, we watched the world's best bartenders compete for the title (ultimately won by Australia's Tim Phillips).
Watching these bartenders work was truly a revelation - it's not just about the drink, it's about the hosting. The sizzle along with the steak, if you will. That's what we were thinking about when we met Hendricks, so we asked her for some advice on hosting a get-together if you're, say, a young guy who's a little short on flair bartending skills.
"Guys sometimes when they're new at this, they're not very good at it," Hendricks said. "I've been to some of those parties, where they'll like, open a bag of chips, throw it on the table ... And you're like, 'Even a bowl would make it nicer!' If you're a young man in a new apartment, a bachelor pad, I think you need a classic bar - just staples. Have a good Scotch whisky. Have good bar utensils. It always looks good to have a classic display. It's very simple. If you serve a classic Scotch - a Johnnie Walker - and you've got a cheese plate, some crackers, you're going to look classy. I'm telling you, that's all you need. It's not that hard. It's all about presentation. "
Say you've got a group of people over, most of whom don't know each other. What can a guy do to ease the awkwardness and make people feel comfortable?
"I have to say normally when people come over I like to put appetisers and things on a table so you have to come up and automatically start talking to people. I make someone a drink right when they walk in the door," Hendricks says. "I introduce everyone, explain how people know each other ... and then often we'll make food together or something like that that gets people talking."
A classy move is to keep the top-shelf stuff as a reward for the people who really settle in and make a night of it. "We usually do Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks for a party, and then later in the evening the people who stick around a little bit longer will get the special occasion Blue Label or something like that, when we're sitting around chatting," she says.
So besides a couple of empty bottles of top-shelf liquor, what are the signs of a successful party? "We've had many nights where the next day people call to thank us. One of my favourite things is when we've somehow introduced friends and they've exchanged numbers in the process. And they will get together later on without us and I'll hear 'Oh I had lunch with so-and-so who I met at your party!'"
Clearly Christina's a fan of serving whisky, but which came first - the Johnnie Walker Blue Label gig, or the love of brown liquor? "I think I first became more aware of whisky seven or eight years ago. I would just take little sips of it at the time when I'd have a friend order it. I liked the smell of it, the colour of it, the idea of it, but I just wasn't very familiar. I always thought it was very sexy when a man ordered a scotch. So I started to enjoy it more, and I started talking about it. And that's when I started my relationship with Johnnie Walker."
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