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September 8, 2026
Ashley Sarkis Named NCRLA Mixologist of the Year
Two cocktails become three awards with Muddy River as a partner
by TM Petaccia
Ashley Sarkis went to the 2026 NCRLA Chef Showdown Grand Finale with two drinks and came home with three awards.
The beverage director at Yunta Nikkei in South End was named NCRLA Mixologist of the Year at the Sept. 2 finale at Bay 7 in Durham. Her cocktail, Up A Creek, was named Best Cocktail of the Year, while her spirit-free Sweet Caroline(a) earned The Dairy Alliance’s award for Best Use of Dairy in a Spirit-Free Cocktail.
Her competition partner, Mount Holly’s Muddy River Distillery, was named NCRLA Distillery of the Year. It is the distillery’s second win, following its selection as the competition’s first Distillery of the Year in 2017. This is the first time a distillery has won the accolade twice.
“I’ve been kind of speechless on it,” Sarkis says. “I feel like it’s very validating. I have put a lot of work into it and really poured my heart and soul into it, and all my brain power for it. I’m just super excited and feel, like, really honored.”
The 2026 Chef Showdown began in the spring and featured 102 competitors across 11 preliminary rounds. Top North Carolina chefs and mixologists tasted and scored each preliminary round presentation, respectively. The field was then narrowed as a total of 46 chefs, pastry chefs and mixologists advanced to the semifinal rounds of competition. In each of four regional semi-final rounds, past NCRLA Chef Showdown Champions sat at both the mixology and culinary Judges Tables, scoring competitors on presentation, taste and their use of local North Carolina ingredients.
Other championship honors went to Taylor Montgomery of Montgomery Sky Farm in Leicester, winner of this year’s James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast, who was named NCRLA Chef of the Year, and Charmaine Devine of Sugo Italian Steakhouse in Wilmington, named Pastry Chef of the Year. Bobby McFarland of Wye Hill in Raleigh and Josh Dobson of the soon-to-open Deepwell in Mooresville (previously of Peppervine) were the respective first runners-up.
People’s Choice awards went to Roberto Barth of Vidrio for Best Savory Dish, Devine for Best Dessert, Zach Benson of Supperland and Outer Banks Distilling for Best Cocktail, and Everette Young of Daingerfields at the Westglow Spa for Best Spirit-Free Cocktail. The Dairy Alliance also recognized Matt Hannon of Ashten’s for Best Use of Dairy in a Savory Dish, Makala Beaver of King Neptune for Best Use of Dairy in a Dessert, and Benson for Best Use of Dairy in a Cocktail.
This was Sarkis’ second year competing. She reached the semifinals in 2025 while partnered with Oaklore Distilling Co., but did not advance to the finale. The experience taught her something about the competition’s structure. Strategy.
Mixologists must create both a cocktail and a spirit-free cocktail for the preliminary round. Those who advance must develop a new pair for the semifinals, with the semifinal drinks continuing to the Grand Finale. “You want to have good enough cocktails and good enough drinks to push you through to the second round, but you don’t want them to be your bangers,” Sarkis says. “You really want to save the bangers for the semifinals.”
One of those “bangers” was Sweet Caroline(a), a spirit-free drink that maintained a connection to Muddy River and its rum-focused identity. “I was working with Muddy River, so I was just really wanting to kind of still be in, like, kind of that rum-tiki kind of vibe,” she says.
Sarkis built the drink around ingredients moving toward the late-summer and fall seasons. She used Just Earl Grey and Golden Glow teas from Charlotte’s Yes Darling Tea, along with a house-made sweet potato and roasted pumpkin seed orgeat. Sweet potatoes and figs from Tony Pasour and Girls Farm in Bessemer City went into the orgeat and a fig syrup.
The drink was topped with cardamom-sugar whipped cream made with cream from Wholesome Country Creamery. A sweet potato chip and a dusting of allspice finished the presentation. That use of local dairy brought Sarkis one of her three awards.
The name Sweet Caroline(a) carried two meanings.
“I wanted to kind of give a nod to Caroline Delaney from Muddy River,” Sarkis says. “So, Caroline, and then also ‘A’ in the parentheses for Carolina. … You can go either way.”
Up A Creek, the cocktail that helped secure Sarkis’ Mixologist of the Year title, took a markedly different approach. It is based on the scaffa, an old, spirit-driven cocktail style assembled without ice or added dilution. Sarkis first encountered the style at Amor y Amargo, the bitters-focused New York bar she calls a favorite.
At the center of her interpretation was Muddy River’s 110-proof Queen Charlotte’s Reserve Navy Strength rum.
“It’s so good,” Sarkis says. “It’s just fantastic on its own, so I really didn’t want to bring dilution to it. It’s 110 proof. It really does drink like a cognac or a bourbon.”
From there, she developed the drink around the landscape that shaped Muddy River’s identity. “Everything was based around things that you could forage around the creek,” she says.
Sarkis infused Muddy River vodka with North Carolina herbs and flowers, including marigolds, goldenrod, northern spicebush, and bergamot bee balm, then back-sweetened it with Herb’s Honey’s South End summer honey. She also made a tincture using shiitake, lion’s mane, and chestnut mushrooms from Charlotte’s Urban Gourmet Farms.
The chestnut mushrooms, she says, brought an earthy quality and a particularly funky note to the tincture.
Muddy River orange curaçao joined the rum and infused vodka, with Southern Pecan bitters providing one of the few elements not produced by the distillery. The drink was mixed without ice, poured into the glass, and finished with expressed orange peel.
“Basically, everything that was in that glass was Muddy River—besides the bitters,” Sarkis says.
The name refers to Muddy River’s move from its original location near the Catawba River to its current home beside Dutchman’s Creek in Mount Holly. As the distillery once described the relocation, it had simply moved “up a creek.”
Although Sarkis remains firmly invested in traditional cocktails, she hopes the recognition for Sweet Caroline(a) will help strengthen her advocacy for thoughtfully made nonalcoholic drinks. “I would love to use this platform to be able to push that non-alcoholic agenda a little bit more,” she says, “and the importance of having a crafted spirit-free cocktail, and how important it is for the inclusivity of your menus.”
Neither winning drink is confirmed for Yunta’s menu. Their preparation is intensive, although Sarkis says she may explore presenting them during a future event at Muddy River.
For her, the partnership and the Chef Showdown were also opportunities to demonstrate what can happen when bartenders, distillers, farmers, and local producers work together.
“I love that NCRLA really gets us on this showcase to really push the Got To Be NC,” Sarkis says. “It’s so important for us to be really working alongside the local farms and supporting that community.”
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