This is the chief mixologist at The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach Florida. We lean on her whenever we have a cocktail situation that requires a professional opinion - you might be surprised how often that actually occurs.

When judging all of the entries for our cocktail contest we started to struggle as to why one was better than another. Almost all of our impartial tasters liked one cocktail as much as the next, saying things like: "...oh, that's really good too."

So we sent our top picks down to Florida for an opinion.
This is how they looked when made by the pros:

"They are all good! What's really the criteria?" came the reply.

So it came back to how did these recipes connect to New London.

Many were strong, many used exotic ingredients, and some had great history attached. Did you know that New London had a very sophisticated rum trade with Barbados?


So next week we will announce the winner. Thanks very much for your participation it has been a lot of fun.