Zac Guertin and Alex Gondzioulis, who are both bartenders at speakeasy Molly, won the Glendalough Distillery Double Time Cocktail competition in Melbourne last week.

To enter, competitors had to submit two cocktails using Glendalough products, one with a whisky and one with a gin. Guertin and Gondzioulis submitted their creations, and only found out a week before the final that they'd made the cut.

They flew to Melbourne for the final at Freddie Wimpoles bar in St Kilda, competing against nine teams from some of the top bars in Australia.

Guertin handled the whisky cocktail.

"I made a classic Irish stew with lamb, potatoes, and Guinness, boiled all that down and left it cooking for a very long time. Then I skimmed the fat from that stew in a technique called fat washing with the whisky where you put the fat into the whisky, freeze it, and the fat will rise to the top and you skim that off. And the whisky will be left with the flavour of that fat," he said.

"So when you smell it and when you taste it it has that rich lamb-y, potato flavour in the whisky. The judges were blown away because two of them were from Ireland and they couldn't stop saying how it reminded them of their mother's cooking and it took them right back there."

Gondzioulis looked after the gin cocktail, blending fino sherry, fresh lime, bitters, a syrup made from honey, apple and rubarb, plus fresh basil and peanut oil.

The two gents started working as bartenders while studying at uni - Gondzioulis finished a degree in international relations a year ago now - but both now work in the industry full-time and say it's what they want to do.

"It's fun and it's not always the same. While we are here making drinks, we meet new people all the time, get to tell stories, and have a lot of fun," Gondzioulis said.

"We like taking care of people. There's a lot of satisfaction in doing this job, you get to make people's nights and in some other jobs maybe you don't get to do that in the same way. There's this instant gratification when you know you've made someone feel good, and they're having a great time."

The prize for the competition is an all expenses paid trip to New York. It will be the first time to the Big Apple for both the gents, and they're looking forward to visiting in the coming months.

"The main prize is we get to work two hours at these two bars in New York, one is called The Dead Rabbit and the other one is called Blacktail," said Gondzioulis.

"The Dead Rabbit is famous for being the number one bar in the world two years in a row. So it's meant to be great cocktails, really cool whisky, and it's just Mecca for us - it's the next level."