By Matt Villano for Wynn Magazine
Believe it or not, morning coffee service inspired both the new cabinet and the whiskey collection inside. Every morning from 6 to 11am, the Tower Suite Bar transforms into a coffee shop where baristas pull coffee drinks on demand. Because so many regular guests visit the Tower Suites, baristas started recognizing faces and memorizing drinks. Guests loved the attention. Casino executives took notice.
“We saw how much our guests loved that personalized attention and wanted to create something special for the Tower Suite Bar at other times of day, as well,” says Alaina Nieves, executive director of beverage. “We wanted to provide [bar guests] with something they could consider their own.”
Nieves and other company officials see the Tower Suite Bar Private Collection as the centerpiece of a new era for the property—an era with an emphasis on handcrafted artisan spirits.
“We saw how much our guests loved that personalized attention and wanted to create something special for the Tower Suite Bar at other times of day, as well.” – Alaina Nieves, Exec. Dir. of Beverage
In the last 12 months alone, the bar has added tableside martini service and a six-drink Old Fashioned menu that Pollard created himself. In early 2019, Wynn also became the first property to launch a bespoke program with Whistle Pig, which means there is Wynn-branded Whistle Pig at the bar.
In the future, Pollard says he plans to host public-facing dinners with representatives from some of these craft spirits brands—events designed to give guests a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interact with brand ambassadors and sample the spirits the way they were meant to be sampled. Pollard says these dinners and the cabinet itself are great ways to educate guests about whiskey.
“Whether it’s the distiller, the distillery, or the limited nature of a particular bottling, every whiskey in this collection has a story behind it,” he says. “Those stories are part of what make this program a VIP experience within the broader VIP experience that is our entire property.”