Betcha didn’t even know Vancouver had a signature cocktail that dates back to the 1950s. Well, the word’s getting out. Read my In Good Spirits column in Saturday’s Vancouver Sun to learn how some of the city’s best barkeeps took the Vancouver Cocktail on the road to Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans.
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/spirit/7107040/story.html
L’Abattoir‘s bar manager sums up his new barrel-aged Martinez in one, succinct word: “It’s elegant,” says Shaun Layton. It’s also pretty darn delicious. The oak cask where the gin, vermouth, bitters and maraschino have lain for the past few weeks has rounded out all the cocktail’s hard edges. It’s also added a faint hint of vanilla and an even fainter whiff of smoke from the scotch the barrel contained before this. This is one fine cocktail.
Barrel-aging cocktails is the hottest new thing to happen to drink. The trend started in London (as so many boozy trends do), with bartender Tony Conigliaro of 69 Colebrooke Row. The idea is to take a spirits-only cocktail like, say, the Manhattan or the Negroni, and age it in either oak or glass for several weeks to add new depths of flavour. Shawn Soole at Clive’s in Victoria has been doing it for a while, Jacob Sweetapple at the Fairmont Pacific Rim has some cocktails in bottles and Layton has just uncorked his first batch at L’Abattoir.
He’s working on some other drinks – I for one will be back for the barrel-aged Hanky Panky – but in the meantime you should head down there and get your aged Martinez before they’re all gone. With only 200 drinks at $15 a pop, they won’t last long.
There are strange things done in the midnight sun . . . and most of them involve liquor of some sort. Man, the folks up here in the Yukon can sure put it back, and I can see why.
In the winter, there’s about three minutes of daylight, plus freezing cold temperatures, and all the activities are the sorts of things that seem like a better idea after a few beverages, like ice fishing, dogsledding, snowmobiling, running marathons in minus-30-degree weather, that sort of thing. Then in summer, there’s almost no night, so it’s a 24-hour party. Woo-hoo!
Whitehorse and Dawson City are wild. They’re filled with the kinds of joints that have lists of 101 shooters with such dubious names as Kitty Litter (don’t ask) and more variations on special coffee than wines by the glass. Plus, of course, there’s the legendary Sour Toe Cocktail served at the Jack London bar in Dawson’s Downtown Hotel, a slug of booze garnished with a human toe. Yes, a real one. Rumour has it the toe tastes much nicer since they started preserving it in rock salt rather than formaldehyde, but of course, you’re not supposed to actually ingest the toe, just let it kiss your lips. In any case, ew.
The folks up here play hard and work hard; they’re tough and fun and funny, really great company. But the best thing about them is their great hospitality. Everyone seems super friendly and generous, and don’t be surprised if they buy you a round of Fireballs or B-52s.
If you want more info about travel to the Yukon, visit the Tourism Yukon site here.
The Toronto Temperance Society on College Street tries to recreate a retro speakeasy feel as it serves up some of the city’s best cocktails.
Time was – and it wasn’t that long ago – it wasn’t so easy to get a decent drink in Toronto. It was, after all, “Toronto the Good,” where the lingering hangover of Prohibition lasted until the ’70s.
You’d never know it now, though.
This city has become a party town everywhere from its chic-again hotel lounges to its sleek wine bars, hipster hangouts and the countless gala events surrounding festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival, which ends this week.
If you’re planning to travel to Toronto (which you probably are, since, as any Torontonian can tell you, it is The Centre of the Universe), here are just a few places to check out.
The all-Canadian Triple Lutz cocktail at Fairmont Chateau Whistler.
It’s a funny thing about Whistler, Host Mountain Resort for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. There’s lots (and lots and lots) to drink, but most of it is pretty mediocre — you know, draft beer, morning-after caesars, plonk by the glass, shooters, the kind of stuff you liked to drink when you were too young to know better. But there are also some exceptional places to enjoy a great cocktail or glass of bubble.
For those of us who’ve evolved beyond the body shot stage of our lives, these are the places to drink in Whistler:
The Alberta Train on its way to Whistler.
Five thirty comes very early in the morning, especially if you’ve been out late the night before. But somehow I made it on time to the invitation-only Alberta Train yesterday — along with a handful of other media, some politicians, business types, tourism folks and even a couple of cowboys — despite the three hours’ sleep and excess partying, which seems to be the way we’re all rolling throughout these Olympic Games.
It wasn’t quite a Stampede Party on rail tracks, but it came awful close.
Winners of the Pacific Northwest Bartending Competition, held Sunday at The Art of the Cocktail in Victoria, were . . .
1st place: David Wolowidnyk of Vancouver’s West Restaurant
2nd place: Danielle Tatarin of Vancouver’s Lumiere / db Bistro Moderne (and soon to join the Keefer Bar in Chinatown)
This was a tough one as the essential ingredient each bartender had to use was the quintessential Northwest cedar. Yes, a tree, and moreover, a tree that becomes toxic when cooked. Kudos to the competitors for finding such creative ways of incorporating it, from cedar-planked tuna sashimi garnish to cedar jelly, cedar tea, smoked cedar syrup and gin-infused cedar berries. Overall, the judges (Thirsty Traveler Kevin Brauch, Don Julio global ambassador and Michelin-starred mixologist Brian Van Flandern, Chicago mixologist and author Bridget Albert, and me) were impressed by the creativity and the cocktails.
But two drinks definitely stood out: Dave’s variation on a hot toddy and Dani’s molecular aperitif. Of course, this brutal competition administered by Art of the Cocktail’s executive mixologist Shawn Soole wasn’t just about the drinks — the bartenders also had to take a written test (I saw it, and it was not easy) and a blind taste test in which they not only had to identify the spirit, but got extra points for identifying the brand.
That should put to rest any idea that these guys are just doing this job while waiting for something else to come along — this is pretty serious stuff.
And now here’s Dave W’s recipe for a Gin Cedar Skin:
3 oz hot water infused with uncharred cedar
1 tsp cedar jelly
3/4 oz simple syrup flavoured with clove and allspice
1/8 oz Fee Brothers Whisky Barrel Bitters
2 oz Victoria gin infused with charred and uncharred cedar
1 zest of orange (for garnish)
Place water, jelly, syrup and bitters in a small pot and heat well. Add gin. Pour into tempered glasses. Garnish by breaking a small coin of orange zest over the drink and dropping it in. Serves 1.
The Refinery's Lauren Mote shakes things up at Victoria's Art of the Cocktail.
This weekend was a smash hit (and, in the case of everyone who was partying with Thirsty Traveler Kevin Brauch at 3 a.m. Saturday night, a pretty smashed one, too — Sunday at Victoria’s Art of the Cocktail, a fundraiser for the Victoria Film Festival, was a very, very quiet day).
Thirsty Traveler Kevin Brauch hijacks Jeffrey Morgenthaler's seminar — and his Plymouth gin.
Aside from the seminars and the competition, there was all sorts of cool stuff going on in the tasting hall. Here are some of the highlights:
• Frank Deiter was there from Okanagan Spirits with his new Taboo Gold, which he describes as an absinthe for “true absintheurs.” It’s available now at the LDB for $65 (his regular Taboo is abut $50). Plus he was allowing tastes of a secret new product he’s working on that will generate some serious excitement when it hits markets, likely sometime nest summer.
• Ron Cooper brought his amazing “single village” mezcals, which should be available in the next few weeks at the Strath in Victoria and, hopefully, throughout the province soon after that. (BTW, if you haven’t visited this great little booze boutique, it’s well worth the trip to the Island because they have all sorts of things you can’t get anywhere else in B.C., like Giffard Creme de Violette and Luxardo maraschino liqueur.) Anyway, Del Maguey mezcal is nothing like the worm-in-the-bottle rotgut you nay have experimented with back on that college road trip. This is a smooth, gorgeous, slightly smoky spirit, like a fine scotch only instead of the vanilla and toffee notes of whisky, you have those unique herbal qualities of agave. Fantastic stuff.
• Victoria Spirits’ master distiller Peter Hunt was there showing off their new “Twisted & Bitter” bitters, which should be available in Victoria in the next couple of weeks.
• Diageo’s Richard Prideaux was there with the full range of Grand Marnier products except for the one thing we’re all waiting for — the new Navan, which was supposed to be in B.C. this month but won’t be arriving till the new year. They’ve reformatted the vanilla liqueur to make it much less sweet, with about 30 per cent less sugar. So, no more hangover in a glass, just luscious, sexy vanilla flavour. We can hardly wait.
And those are only a few highlights of a great weekend of tasting and learning new stuff and meeting some of the most passionate people in the business. All in all, it was a great event, and we can only hope that it will be back next year, bigger and better and even boozier!
A Dark
So, no royal sightings, but plenty of great cocktails. If you love spirits and mixed drinks, Victoria, B.C., is where you need to be this weekend for The Art of the Cocktail, a two-day fundraising festival for the Victoria film fest.
Some of the best mixologists in North America are here, people like Bridget Albert and Jeffrey Morgenthaler and Brian Van Flandern, all sharing their tips, techniques and inside knowledge about making great drinks. Plus there are all sorts of reps from both international producers like Belvedere, Hendrick’s, Don Julio and Tuaca, as well as the local Victoria Spirits, Okanagan Spirits and Schramm vodka. If you’re in or around Victoria, try to drop by for the afternoon tasting and cocktail competition — I’ll be judging, and it sounds like it’ll be a fairly lively contest!
Meanwhile, here are a few highlights:
• The personality of the festival is definitely Thirsty Traveler Kevin Brauch, an inescapable presence who’s been leading the rest of the bartenders on hangover-inducing pub crawls, bouncing in and out of other presenters’ sessions, jumping into other media interviews, and having a grand old time in general. Highly entertaining for the rest of us.
• It’s been great to see so many women involved, from festival organizer Kathy Kay to international bartending sensations Bridget Albert and Charlotte Voisey, as well as local mixologists Lauren Mote and Dani Tatarin, not to mention that more than half the people in any session I sat in on were women. You go, girls! Seems the days of spirits being a man’s world are over.
• The trendy spirit of 2010? According to Portland’s Jeffrey Morgenthaler, it’s going to be Mezcal, which is already taking New York by storm.
• What are we drinking? Dark ‘n’ Stormys. With Fever Tree and Fentiman’s craft ginger beer here, as well as Morgenthaler’s seminar on making your own ginger beer, it’s all about the spicy soda, best served with a glug of dark, molassessy rum. As Morgenthaler said at the first session yesterday as he poured us a round of Dark ‘n’ Stormys: “I think it’s a great morning beverage.” Couldn’t agree more.
• Where are we drinking? When they close the tasting hall, it’s back to Clive’s, where the festival’s executive mixologist Shawn Soole is manning the bar each night after pulling a full shift at the festival. If you haven’t been to his bar in the Chateau Victoria, you should plan a special trip to the Island just to check it out — this is a gorgeous bar, with terrific cocktails.
Lots more to come, but now I have to head off to brunch, then back to festival. Cheers!
Thirsty Traveler Kevin Brausch will be one of the presenters this weekend at Art of the Cocktail.
This weekend is the inaugural Art of the Cocktail in Victoria, B.C., and it should be a great fest. It’s a fundraiser for the Victoria Film Festival and organized by a pair of cocktail maniacs, film fest director Kathy Kay and Shawn Soole, the very passionate bartender at Clive’s in the Chateau Victoria.
There are cocktail-themed dinners, a grand tasting room and seminars led by pros like Portland’s Jeffrey Morgenthaler, the Wormwood Society’s Gwydion Stone, Hendrick’s ambassador Charlotte Voisey, Thirsty Traveler Kevin Brausch and loads of others, including Vancouverites Lauren Mote and David Wolowidnyk. Oh, and of course there will be a cocktail competition on Sunday, and I’ll be one of the judges at that.
If you haven’t already planned to come to Vancouver Island for this, you still have time to book your BC Ferry, Helijet or Harbour Air trip over — this should be a great event and one not to miss.
Heck, as it turns out, even Charles and Camilla will be in town on their grand Canadian tour. They’ll be touring the Legislature right around cocktail hour this afternoon — I think we should invite them down the street to Clive’s for an Aviation or two, don’t you think?