Bo­bie-lee Dixon

At eight-years-old most girls would be play­ing with their dolls or ask­ing their dad to take them to the can­dy store. But for Abi­o­la Jules mix­ing drinks was her thing. De­vel­op­ing a love for the art at that ten­der age, Jules said she be­gan mix­ing juices us­ing fruit cock­tails to gar­nish them.

"I would al­ways use my mom­my's best glass­es...mak­ing sure the drinks I made looked good," she re­vealed. By the age of sev­en­teen, Jules grad­u­at­ed from just mix­ing juices to mak­ing her first al­co­holic drink. "You know when you were small you would put your tea in the fridge to get cold?

"Well I did that with a cup of mi­lo and I placed cof­fee liqueur in it, it tast­ed so good... it be­came my sig­na­ture drink when­ev­er there were guests at the house," gig­gled Jules. Asked about her moth­er's in­volve­ment in her seem­ing­ly odd pas­sion, the 29-year-old said she al­ways re­ceived sup­port, and added her moth­er would even ask her to "do some­thing" with her sor­rel when­ev­er she made it.

"With my moth­er's ap­proval I be­gan mix­ing more al­co­holic drinks...I even­tu­al­ly made my first rum punch. It was then I re­alised how much I loved the art," she as­sert­ed.

Set­ting the foun­da­tion

Fresh­ly out of sec­ondary school, un­like her peers who opt­ed to study A lev­els, Jules en­rolled in a bar­tend­ing course with Mont­gomery Guy and Michael Abra­ham–a food and bev­er­age con­sul­tant from Eng­land. Not­ing she ini­tial­ly took the course to gain knowl­edge to im­prove her home made drinks, Jules ar­tic­u­lat­ed af­ter spend­ing time with oth­er as­pir­ing bar­tenders and see­ing their pas­sion for the art, she de­cid­ed bar­tend­ing was in­deed go­ing to be her ca­reer.

The jour­ney be­gins

Bare­ly out of the bar­tend­ing course Jules got her first job as an of­fi­cial bar­tender at a restau­rant in Ch­aguara­mas.

"Af­ter work­ing at Ch­aguara­mas I moved on to oth­er restau­rants as a bar­tender but I re­mained do­ing my train­ing in bar­tend­ing on the side," Jules said.

As fate would have it, in 2006 while Jules was seek­ing to find a way to put her train­ing as a fe­male bar­tender in­to prac­tice, she found out that the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel was be­ing con­struct­ed in Trinidad. Wast­ing no time Jules im­me­di­ate­ly re­searched the ho­tel on­line. What did she find? The place she be­lieved would be her home of bar­tend­ing.

"Af­ter I viewed them on­line I said to my­self when they are opened I am go­ing to be work­ing there," de­clared Jules. This be­came a re­al­i­ty one year lat­er.

A dream ma­te­ri­alis­es

An ad in the dai­ly news­pa­pers, an ap­pli­ca­tion form filled out and an un­wa­vered faith got Jules an in­ter­view with the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel. "I ap­plied on­line af­ter see­ing the ad in the pa­pers and they e-mailed me telling me they had a ca­reer fair day at An­gos­tu­ra Ltd.

"When I got there I was a bit in­tim­i­dat­ed about se­cur­ing a po­si­tion be­cause there were lit­er­al­ly thou­sands of peo­ple ap­ply­ing for po­si­tions at the ho­tel, and those ap­ply­ing for the po­si­tion of bar­tend­ing were some of my past man­agers at restau­rants where I worked," ex­plained Jules.

In­ter­viewed right there and then Jules re­ceived a phone call three weeks lat­er to have an­oth­er two in­ter­views done–this time at the ho­tel. The in­ter­views, though tricky, as Jules de­scribed them, she aced her way through, and land­ed the po­si­tion of the lob­by bar, bar­tender.

They call me by name

She is fa­mous for the cre­ation of her sig­na­ture drinks that can on­ly be found on a Hy­att's drink menu. Boast­ing that her drinks have de­light­ed the taste buds of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al celebri­ties, she said: "Let's just say they (celebri­ties) call me by name."

She placed spe­cial em­pha­sis on the fact that every drink menu that comes from the Hy­att's lob­by bar is the re­sult of a team ef­fort as her sig­na­ture drinks are in­spired by her "bar­tend­ing crew".

"We do take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion what can re­al­ly sat­is­fy our guests and that's why we come up with these amaz­ing sig­na­ture drinks that you can on­ly find here (Hy­att)," said Jules.

Though Jules' as­pi­ra­tion is to one day have her own busi­ness she said for now she is con­tent­ed work­ing at the Hy­att as she has learned so much from the ho­tel. "This is the best place to work in Trinidad right now. "The com­pa­ny is grow­ing here and I want to grow with the com­pa­ny," Jules con­fessed.