Ultimate Cocktail Experience Creates Four Pop-Up Bars With 40 Cocktails

For the seventh year, DFW bars will be a ghost town for one night. Why? Our favorite bartenders will be getting behind the stick for an all-out cocktail event doing something great for charity. We hope the kids don't mind that we're helping raise money with a cocktail in hand.

From 6 to 11 p.m. on Sept. 22, the Ultimate Cocktail Experience will take over the Bomb Factory and will virtually monopolize all things boozy in Dallas. With more than 80 volunteers, from bartenders to cocktail batchers and bar backs, this event will surprise, delight and intoxicate attendees. Expect to see four radically different pop-up bar concepts — Neon, The Lab, Corner Bar and Elevate — ranging from swanky sips to a cozy, neighborhood bar. You'll see 10 cocktails from each concept and be given the chance to vote for your favorite team.

Along with a veritable Candyland of cocktails, there will be unique experiences at each bar. Think fortune-tellers, shoe shines, a showgirl in a champagne skirt and more. The Dallas industry's favorite DJ, Dave Paradice, will be spinning, and the aptly named Manhattan Band will play a bar or two throughout the night. If 40 cocktails and intriguing performances aren't enough, you can purchase a VIP ticket and have free reign of the VIP lounge, VIP bar and wine cave. Yes, a wine cave.

While there will be quite a few of our favorite local publicans pouring cocktails at this event, you will have the chance to sample cocktails from big-name bartenders from elsewhere, too: Oklahoma City, Austin and even Los Angeles, Toronto and as far as Australia. Special guest bartenders include Trash Collective co-founders Iain Griffiths and Kelsey Ramage, Kabir Akbani from Zuma in Miami, recent Bombay Sapphire Most Imaginative Bartender regional winner Austin Millspaugh, and the 86 Co. co-founder, Simon Ford.

The event benefits Trigger's Toys, a not-for-profit group that gives aid (and frankly, spoils the crap out of) hospitalized children and their families.

"Last year, the UCE collected more than $200,000, and this year, they’re hoping to top that number and provide even more assistance to those in need," according to a press release for the event.

Purchase tickets before this event sells out.