“I was so excited. I would never have thought,” Cristin Pennington said of her win for Best Bartender in the Best of the Tri-State voting by readers of The Ironton Tribune.

Pennington has worked at The Auger Inn, located at 2324 S. Third St. in Ironton, since January, coming to the establishment following the closure of The Bar on Third, where she worked prior.

Nominated first by readers, she attributes her win to the relationships she built with customers at her previous job, many of whom came to The Auger Inn when she did.

A graduate of Greenup County High School, she said she was working at The End Zone in Ironton when she decided to go to bartending school in Lexington, Kentucky.

“I started seeing how crowded the bar was and wanted to do that,” she said.

When asked what her favorite thing about her job is, she says “It’s 100 percent the people.”

“I see all the same people here, everybody from The Bar on Third,” she said of her regulars. “And I love spending Thanksgiving and Christmas with them.”

Pennington said she wants to thank all of her regulars and her “bar family.”

“I couldn’t have done it without them,” she said of her win.