It is my great pleasure in introducing one of the rising stars of the flair world, a man whose total self belief and determination has put him centre stage. An inspiration, Luca Valentin.

Hello everyone

My name is Luca Valentin, spelt without an “E”, so many people put it on the end of Valentin, this comes from my Italian decendents, not the US.

I come from Romania, I am 23 years and work for Exquisite Bar Solutions…and many people say that I will be a future flair star (hahahaha it’s a joke).

But now, let’s be serious, many people tell me that I represent a new generation of flair, and that my style is one never seen before.

I can safely say that when I started to flair four years ago, I had a very strange style, everyone looked at me oddly and never gave me any chance to make a success in the flair world.

Perhaps that’s because I had developed a completely new and different style of flair.

Our country is beginning to expand, the economy has begun to grow and a lot of bartenders are beginning to make their mark…you’ll see this in years to come!

Our aim is to be like Italy and have six bartenders in the Roadhouse World Flair Finals, which is an unbelievable record by the way.

When I talk about inspiration, I do not know if I was inspired by someone. When I started entering competitions, I would stay in rooms with other bartenders, they all had the latest flair DVDs, and asked,

“Do you know who this is?” and I answered back, “No, I don’t!!!”

In other words I did not watch flair DVDs, I knew the legendary Christian Delpech and Adriano Marcelino but nobody else. So I developed my own style.

John asked me the question, “Where do you think flair will be in five years time?”, and I think we are moving to technical flair, as do you remember Maradona, John?

He eleganty took the ball and effortlessly passed player after player, slotting it into the goal, winning the game; this was beautiful football, now it’s just technical. Flair will be like this in five yers, there will be a lot more rules.

Someday, perhaps I can give advice but now I will trust in the words of David Parnas, “Copy and paste is a design error”.

I think the perseverance, creativity and originality are the keywords in everything we do.

Cheers

Luca