Dushan Zaric, a bartender and consultant with over 18 years of experience, gave a presentation about spirits and cocktails. He discussed various topics like the origins of alcohol, the fermentation and distillation processes used to make spirits, tasting spirits to understand their flavor profiles, and balancing ingredients in cocktails. The goal is to create balanced, complex cocktails that avoid being one or overly multi-dimensional in taste. Examples were given of classic cocktails made with different base spirits to illustrate these concepts.