Steven LeBlanc made his first foray into mixing drinks and bartending when he was in the Navy, researching a lot on his own, creating classic cocktails and his variations on them and testing them on friends and shipmates, then serving drinks in an officers’ club.

Fast-forward several years and LeBlanc, of Northampton, is still whipping up cocktails, this time for customers in the Valley and now for a contest sponsored by two of the actors from the hugely popular AMC television series “Breaking Bad.”

LeBlanc, who handles the bartending at Homestead, the Northampton restaurant that’s dedicated to using a lot of local produce, is part of what’s known as Bar Boss, an international competition that aims to give the winning bartender a $10,000 prize and a front-page photo on the cover of Bartender Magazine.

The lucky mixologist might also get his or her original cocktail featured in the magazine with some photos and a printed recipe.

For LeBlanc, who grew up in Easthampton and graduated from Easthampton High in 2010, the Bar Boss competition seems unique, since it’s not predicated just on developing a red-hot new drink but on personality.

So far, bartenders have advanced in the contest by creating a short profile of themselves and then having people vote for them through their social media sites, like LeBlanc’s Instagram site (instagram.com/captain_cocktail).

At the end of the second week of December, LeBlanc, 30, found himself in second place among about 55 competitors in a regional group — and he’s grateful for that vote of confidence from customers, friends and others who have gone to bat for him after finding out about the contest through social media and word of mouth.

“I’m really, really happy to see the overwhelming support from the community, that people appreciate this small thing I can do for them,” he said during a recent afternoon at Homestead, located on Strong Avenue.

“As a bartender, it’s not about you, it’s about what other people think about you,” he added. “It’s not about me serving you my favorite drink, it’s about me giving you the drink you want.”

Not that LeBlanc isn’t invested in creating a new cocktail for Bar Boss. He’s been working pretty intensively, he says, in the last three to four weeks developing something he calls the Thirty-Eight Snub: a mix of mezcal, fresh lime juice, syrup created from caramelized pineapple, and a few other ingredients.

“A lot of times people say ‘Oh, I love mezcal because it’s rough and tumble, it’s smoky, it’s got a lot character,’ and I’m kind of like, ‘Well, can mezcal be used with softer hands?’” LeBlanc said. “Maybe put some other things around it but don’t overpower it … I wasn’t seeing any mezcal cocktails that had a more delicate approach.”

His new drink title is in part a reference to a revolver with a very short barrel — also known as a .38 Special — as well as to an episode of “Breaking Bad” with that same title, in which the character of Walter, played by Bryan Cranston, plots to kill another character in the crime drama.

The connection to “Breaking Bad” is significant, after all, because Bar Boss has been sponsored in large part by Dos Hombres, an artisan mezcal company created in 2019 by Cranston and Aaron Paul, another star of the TV series.

Dos Hombres in turn is working with the fundraising group Colossal to use money raised through the Bar Boss competition for the Kind Campaign, a nonprofit group that’s dedicated to combating girl-on-girl bullying.

On a short video on the Bar Boss website, Cranston and Paul praise a couple people who serve them drinks, then turn to the camera and spell out the basics of the competition: “We’re looking for the bartender with the biggest personality and the most loyal customer base,” Cranston says.

“And, of course, who makes the best cocktails,” adds Paul.

Tequila’s older, cooler brother

LeBlanc, who’s worked in a number of bars and restaurants in Northampton — Eastside Grill, India House, the former Green Room — says that approach appealed to him when he learned about the competition earlier this fall and decided to throw his hat in the ring.

“The usual thing with these contests is, ‘What can you make for us?’” he said. “The website will say, ‘This is the greatest cocktail ever made, winner of the such-and-such award,’ and I’m asking ‘Who made it?’ They don’t even put that out there.”

The profiles that contestants create for Bar Boss include a photo and answers to three questions: What’s your favorite thing about being a bartender, what would you do with the $10,000 prize, and what three ingredients do you have to have behind the bar. His profile can be viewed at barboss.org/2023/steven-robert-leblanc.

For that last question, LeBlanc writes that he can do a lot with buckwheat honey, Lisbon lemons, and a somewhat aged “bottle of overproof apple brandy.”

Not that there’s one right answer to that question, he notes. “Well, to be safe you want to say, ‘Three bottles of Dos Hombres mezcal, of course!’” he said with a laugh.

At Homestead, LeBlanc explained how he’s created his new cocktail, one that he’s still tweaking; he believes it won’t be until sometime in January that remaining contestants will be asked to submit pictures and recipes of their drinks.

The Thirty-Eight Snub is his variation on the French 75, a classic cocktail based on gin, sugar, fresh lemon juice and champagne. His goal has been to create a drink that mixes sweet and savory touches that are built around what he calls mezcal’s smokiness.

“Mezcal is the older, cooler brother of tequila,” he said. “It smokes cigarettes and rides motorcycles … tequila is basically a style or type of mezcal.”

But mezcal has only become popular in this region of the country in the last 10 years or so, he says, which makes it a good base for building a new cocktail.

At Homestead, he mixed mezcal, fresh-squeezed lime juice, and some prosecco and a pineapple-based syrup to create what he called an “approximation” of his cocktail, as it lacked another ingredient he’s used at home: tepache, a fermented, slightly alcoholic beverage he creates from pineapple juice, the pineapple rind, and a few spices.

He shook the cocktail with ice, then strained out any ice chunks as he poured the drink into a small glass, topping it with a fresh sage leaf. The result was a little bit reminiscent of a margarita, fruity and tangy but also slightly smoky and a good bit less sweet.

LeBlanc says the Bar Boss competition is slated to eliminate a certain number of contenders each week. Assuming he keeps making the cuts, he’ll eventually face off against a smaller and smaller group of contenders into January, with the winner likely being picked the first week of February.

It’s not clear how many bartenders are in the competition; LeBlanc speculates there could be thousands, based on the discussion he’s seen about it on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

For now he’s simply happy to be holding his own in the competition, just a few years after COVID-19 shut down bars everywhere for months and made it difficult for some to come back — and for some bartenders to keep their jobs.

“I’m stubborn,” he said with a laugh. “I wanted to stay [in Northampton] and I’m glad I did. I’m so grateful for how people are supporting me now.”

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.