Garden Heat & Floral Fizz: Inside the Winning Cocktails from the 2025 Denver Food + Wine Festival’s Shake + Brake Showdown
The 2025 Shake + Brake Showdown once again brought together some of the city’s most creative bartenders and delicious food trucks for an evening of innovation, craft cocktails, and pure flavor. Bartenders and food trucks went head-to-head in a friendly competition, vying for the Judge’s Choice and People’s Choice titles.
Two standout cocktails rose above the rest — one capturing the judges’ palates with bold garden intensity, the other winning over the crowd with floral elegance and effervescent charm. Together, they tell a story about the depth and diversity of Denver’s cocktail scene.
Here’s a closer look at the 2025 winning drinks and how you can make them at home!
Judges’ Choice Winner: Life’s a Garden, Dig It!
Sebastian Zydek — Lazy Dog Bar & Grill
Sebastian Zydek’s winning cocktail was a vibrant, savory-sweet expression of late-summer produce layered with rich reposado tequila. Equal parts playful and refined, “Life’s a Garden, Dig It!” delivered complexity without losing drinkability.
Cocktail Ingredients
2 oz. Mi Campo Reposado Tequila
0.25 oz. Campari
1 oz. fresh lemon juice
3.5 oz. Garden Jam (see below)
Garden Jam Ingredients
4 large yellow bell peppers, stemmed and seeded
5 fresh strawberries, hulled
1 small habanero chile, stemmed and seeded
Fresh cracked black pepper (about 8–10 cranks)
1 cup granulated sugar
How to Make the Garden Jam
Dice the yellow bell peppers and strawberries. Slice the habanero. Add all to a medium bowl.
Stir in the sugar until combined.
Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for about 1 hour.
Blend using an immersion blender or countertop blender until smooth.
Transfer to airtight mason jars and refrigerate.
Now you’ve got a vibrant, sweet-and-spicy jam that’s not only the backbone of this cocktail but also incredibly versatile.
Make the Cocktail
Shake all ingredients with ice and fine strain into a chilled glass filled with crushed or pebble ice.
It’s bright. It’s layered. It’s unexpected. And it’s exactly the kind of creative risk that wins over judges.
People’s Choice Winner: The Bloom After
Anna Westby of El Matador captured the People’s Choice Award with her floral-forward cocktail, “The Bloom After.” The crowd loved it for its aromatic and beautifully layered nuance, inspired by overcoming hardship and “blooming after.”
Light, effervescent, and delicately perfumed, this cocktail is a celebration of springtime in a glass, proving that balance and elegance can be just as powerful as bold intensity.
Ingredients
1.5 oz. Grey Whale Gin
0.75 oz. Lavender Honey Orgeat (lavender honey recipe and orgeat recipe)
0.5 oz. Lime Tonic Syrup
0.5 oz. fresh lime juice
2 oz. Topo Chico Sparkling Water (to top)
Garnish: Edible flowers + 2–3 sprays floral cocktail perfume (Vanilla, Elderflower, Orange Blossom)
Method
Add gin, lavender honey orgeat, lime tonic syrup, and fresh lime juice into a shaker with ice.
Shake until well chilled.
Strain into a chilled glass over fresh ice (or serve up, depending on preferred presentation).
Top with 2 oz. of Topo Chico Sparkling Water.
Garnish with edible flowers.
Finish with 2–3 light sprays of floral cocktail perfume for an aromatic flourish.
Built on the clean, coastal botanicals of Grey Whale Gin, “The Bloom After” layers floral sweetness from lavender honey orgeat with bright citrus and gentle bitterness from lime tonic syrup. The effervescence of Topo Chico adds lift and texture, while the floral perfume elevates the drinking experience beyond taste, engaging aroma before the first sip.
A Showcase of Denver’s Cocktail Creativity
What makes these two cocktails so compelling is not just that they took home prizes; it’s that they represent two very different philosophies behind the bar.
Life’s a Garden, Dig It! explores savory sweetness, texture, and spice.
The Bloom After celebrates aromatics, balance, and effervescence.
One leans earthy and bold. The other, floral and lifted. Together, they reflect a cocktail culture that values both experimentation and elegance.
The Shake + Brake Showdown continues to prove that Denver’s bartenders aren’t just following trends, they’re creating them!
As the Denver Food + Wine Festival grows each year, so does the artistry behind the bar. If these two cocktails are any indication, the city’s cocktail scene is blooming — and digging deeper — than ever before.
Cheers to the talent, creativity, and community that make it all possible.
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