Tad Carducci is a lifelong bartender, award-winning mixologist and general bon vivant, with twenty-five years experience in the hospitality industry. He is one half of the dynamic duo known as the Tippling Bros., a New York based beverage consultancy dedicated to "spirituous advisement and raising of the bar". He has won several major awards and national cocktail competitions and has judged, organized and emceed a few as well. Carducci is a partner in the Mercadito Hospitality group (winner of several regional and national wards, including the 2011 Cheers Benchmark of Excellence for Best Cocktail Lounge and 2013 Beverage Innovator of the Year), with restaurants in New York, Chicago and Miami and is also a partner in a cavernous cocktail bar in the basement of New York’s famous Chelsea Market, appropriately named The Tippler.
His work has been featured in Food and Wine Magazine, NY Times, NY Post, Bon Appetit, Esquire, Miami Herald, Chicago Sun-Times, Imbibe, Vogue, Details, W Magazine, TimeOut, Rachel Ray, Travel and Leisure, Cheers!, Sante, Food Arts, Conde Nast, Skiing, Mr. Boston and many other national publications, as well as on NBC’s the Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Sirius-XM radio, CW 11 Morning News, CNBC, Martha Stewart Radio and other media. He is a frequent contributor to Cheers! Magazine and has written several articles for Sante. Along with partner, Paul Tanguay, he penned the 2011 Cheers Media Spirits On-Premise Handbook. He and Tanguay also authored the soon-to-be–released, Tippling Bros. A Lime and a Shaker: Discovering Mexican-Inspired Cocktails.
Tad is very proud to be a top-level graduate of the inaugural Beverage Alcohol Resource course and has earned certificates from both the Court of Master Sommeliers and the Wine and Spirits Education Trust. He is honored to be a member of the Bar Smarts national training team and to have been chosen as a judge for both the Ultimate Spirits Challenge and Ultimate Cocktail Challenge with Paul Pacult.
Tad lives in a little 1930’s bungalow with his wife Joanne, son Leonardo and daughter Abigail. He is convinced that he hung out with Ernest Hemingway in his last go round, and if he had it to do over again, would be a jazz crooner or professional lobsterman. He’s addicted to hot dogs and the Discovery Channel, plays guitar very badly and drives way way too fast.
