“I have always loved learning new things, and from a very young age I realised that happiness to me is directly linked to the opportunity of learning. It’s my engine that keeps me pushing forward – the one thing I cannot live without – and at the times of my career where it’s not been present, it’s something that I’ve greatly missed.

As a young bartender, I struggled quite a lot to fit in, because I always found myself chasing information- and specifically – answers to questions no one else seemed to ask. I grew up in a home where the connection to agriculture was firmly established and celebrated, and I spent my weekends foraging, harvesting, preserving – you name it – according to the season. It was only later in life that I realised this was not the norm, and that most kids don’t make fruit wines at the age of 10 or keep sourdough starters in their bedroom or learn how to skin an elk at 12. Ironically, when I came to the point in my life when I wanted to learn more about these things professionally (maybe not the elk part) – there was very little to be found, if anything, so I went searching.

Within the first 5 years of my bartending career, I pretty much covered it all; dive bars, pubs, nightclubs, various types of bars and restaurants – only to eventually end up in a cocktail bar. Against the advice of most, I rarely spent even a full year in each place, because once I’d learned what I came for, my restlessness kicked in, and I was off to the next one.
I would roam all the biggest book shops in Oslo, and devour any kind of drinks related material I could find – when I could find it.

Eventually, I would also discover the online forums and chatrooms dedicated to drinks, and slowly but steadily, my world expanded. I started dreaming about attending bar shows, to visit cities like London and New York – and it was actually on my first visit to the latter, that I had my first real bartending “aha” moment back in 2011.

“I came to the point in my life when I wanted to learn more about these things professionally (maybe not the elk part) – there was very little to be found, if anything, so I went searching”

I was sat at the bar in Death & Co – with the sickest line up of bartenders; Joaquín Simó, Thomas Waughn and Jessica Gonzalez – and it suddenly struck me “WOW, I do what they do!”. Obviously at a different scale and level, but at the end of the day, I bartend and tend bar – just like them. It sounds so silly, but it was such an important moment for me, because it made me understand that due to the human nature of what we do, some things cannot be taught by reading a book – they can only be lived and shared.

They say knowledge is power, and it most certainly is, but it is also potential or the lack thereof. It represents both what our industry will look like if we don’t act now, continuing to complain about the lack of qualified talent whilst turning a blind eye to the outsourcing of education which relies only on brands and agencies, OR we can reach that potential if we act now. It is very easy to point fingers and criticize, but in my experience, real change only happens from within, and for that, we need to show up and be willing to work together.

I’ve always firmly believed it needs to be ourselves who decide our own future, because after all, we are the only ones who know what we need and want – despite those two things not always aligning. The challenge is despite knowledge being free and readily available, we also have to deliver it in a manageable format which is both interesting and engaging – because learning can be fun, however, I think we can all agree that it can also not be.

At this stage in my professional life, I know I don’t have all the answers – nor do I need to have them – but selfishly speaking, there is nothing that makes me happier than seeing the impact of knowledge and education, and witnessing the confidence it can give someone who is just starting to understand the full potential of themselves. The importance of having someone believe in you – more than you do yourself – is priceless, and something I wish everyone gets to experience at least once. Personally, I’ve been very fortunate to have individuals guide me through life, be it my parents in the early stages, or some (not all) of my bosses in my professional life, and the more time I spend in this industry, the more I realise that this not the norm. So how can we change that? Well, it all starts with education; because you cannot teach what you do not know.

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons I learned doing P(our), was that if all you have is good intentions, you don’t actually have a lot. Let me explain; yes – we had the passion, yes – we had the network and yes we most definitely had the vision BUT what we didn’t have was the knowledge (how to set it up), the infrastructure (logistics is a killer ) and as a charity, we definitely didn’t have the money. But in the end, we still managed to challenge the status quo at the time, and push the industry into a new format of education. To me, who spent almost 5 years at the beginning of my career teaching – this felt incredible – but it also made me realise how much I’d missed this side of it.

“At this stage in my professional life, I know I don’t have all the answers – nor do I need to have them – but selfishly speaking, there is nothing that makes me happier than seeing the impact of knowledge and education, and witnessing the confidence it can give someone who is just starting to understand the full potential of themselves.”

Which is why, when Campari Academy invited me to be part of this project, and despite having some initial reservations, I was very excited. Excited to work with the team of people I get to work with, excited for what this project can become and excited that a company like Campari Group shares the vision for rethinking drinks education, re-imagining how we digest information and of course that they want to be part of building the dream of ‘what ifs’.

It’s been extremely tough these past two years, and my hope is that we can take all of these lessons we’ve learned, and channel them into something tangible and useful for the next generations, and hopefully we can get back on track to reinvent a
future which is better than the past we’ve had.

Monica Berg”

Arguably, teaching is a creative profession, and I believe, as bartenders we could excel in this field if we just put our minds to it. The reason why I sometimes find drinks education boring, to say the least, is because of the disconnect between what bartenders want to learn, and what people think we want to learn. Yes, we need to know how spirits are distilled or when to stir vs when to shake, but equally important is it to understand what your body language reveals about you, how better designed bars can improve your peak turnover performance or why seasonality is more than being able to read a calendar. Together, all of these and many more, make up the intricate nature of bartending – and proves it’s incredibly important to look outside of the industry to find inspiration. Doing so allows us to look at things from different perspectives, it allows us to develop as bartenders but also people – and will give us the tools we need to adapt the ever-evolving role of the modern bartender.

When I said yes to becoming the creative director of the Campari Academy, I had so many ideas and thoughts that I instantly had to take a step back and tell myself to calm down. To be honest, this is not an unusual thing, because at the core, I am a dreamer – but the fact that within a few days I was already discussing internally if I should model it after Hogwarts or Harvard might be a bit much. So instead, I started to ask around.

Through conversations with friends and colleagues, I started gathering topics, problems and ideas of what to explore – and it quickly became apparent that there was a need to find some sort of way to categorise or compartmentalise them, to give it more structure. The needs and wants of today’s bartenders are so diverse and varied, that in the beginning it felt a bit overwhelming to be trying to choose where to begin. Because how can you find something that resonates with everyone and is also relevant to everyone – well, the short answer is; you can’t, and it won’t. But you can create a system that makes it easier to look at the challenges from all levels; globally, locally and individually – and allow them to adapt to the needs of each.

I have always believed in systems and structure; despite it not always coming naturally to me, it is crucial when you want to create something that will exist beyond yourself. How many times have you tried to explain something you do every day – for example why you use lime for this and lemon for that – only to realise that despite knowing it perfectly well for yourself, it’s really hard to explain it to someone else?

This has always been one of the hardest challenges for me personally, especially when it comes to making drinks. The way I work with flavours is very instinctual and often without clear rules or guidelines – meaning it can sometimes be difficult to pass the knowledge on to others. Over the years, I’ve had to work hard to improve on this, and only by looking at it from a different perspective than my own, I managed to find a way to teach how to develop flavour instincts as a way to create drinks.

The role of education should be to excite the power of creativity and imagination, and for this to happen it needs to be both engaging, inspiring and of course; intelligent! Learning can, and should, be fun – but most importantly – it should be democratic and it should be for everyone. The conventional way of teaching the standardised topics we all know so well; spirts knowledge, recipes, drinks groups and families etc alone are not enough anymore – in fact, I would almost say they are limiting our progress and potential growth – and therefore needs to become a part of a bigger universe of resources we pull from.

In the same way that I want all of my team to one day go on to become better, smarter, faster and more successful than I can ever be – I also want the next generation of bartenders to have all the information, knowledge, tools and skills I always dreamt of having. That is why I have created three overarching themes to start with, but within those themes there are no boundaries to what can be explored and discovered. Most importantly – this is just the beginning!

The first theme, Community and Culture, looks at everything from the ecology of drinking, geography and the role of bars and bartenders in society – but also looks at understanding locality, culture and human behaviour through the lens of our industry. It is where we’ll talk about important stuff like employment, diversity, empathy and anything else we need to speak about as a community, in order to rebuild our industry to a better place.

Design and Technology investigates how we can build better, more efficient bars – but also design more welcoming inclusive spaces. We look at ways we can implement technology in a purposeful way – because I don’t think anyone really believes that a robot bartender will ever be the answer, regardless of the question.

Anyone who knows me will understand how excited I am about the last theme, Raw Material and Flavour, where we will explore all the things I get extra excited about; seasonality, agriculture, biodiversity, sustainability, techniques and traditions – and as we search for the future of flavour, we look further and more alternative than ever before. Needless to say, I can hardly sleep in anticipation!

I am super excited to be starting this journey together, and I hope you will join me and the rest of the Campari Academy team in this new adventure where we try to reimagine how we learn and digest knowledge, so we can unlock our full potential.

See you in the bars!