Culinary events tend to fall into one of two categories. There are fun events that center on enjoying great food and drink and educational events from which you walk away with a new understanding about a food-related topic. Arizona Cocktail Week is the first event we've been to that does a flawless job of accomplishing both. This relatively new festival offers a week of cocktail-centric events ranging from booze-filled parties to seminars with some of the nation's top drink experts. The lineup this year was better than ever, and we're only expecting things to continue improving as the event continues to grow. In the span of just a few days, we managed to triple our knowledge of spirits and got a good grasp of what's going on in the national cocktail scene. The only thing we'd change for our plans for next year is to book a room at the host hotel; spirit tasting is no joke.