Afternoon tea at the Fairmont Empress is one of Victoria’s bucket-list experiences, served in one of the city’s most iconic spaces, the hotel’s soaring and ornate tea lobby. But now, says Maeve Fogarty, “We’re twisting afternoon tea on its head.”

Each night the tea lobby is transformed into the city’s most glamourous cocktail lounge for Sunset Sips. “Everything on the Sunset Sips menu has a tea component,” says Fogarty, a tea and wine sommelier who is also the hotel’s director of restaurants and bars. “They wanted to do tea, but tea doesn’t make sense at 8 p.m.”

Cocktails are served in elegant glass teapots for one or two, and guests can also order sweet and savoury snacks served on tiered plates, just like at afternoon tea, but all grown up.

Among the half-dozen bespoke cocktails is Tiffany’s Breakfast, a twist on a Breakfast Martini that’s named for the nightclub that used to be tucked away in the basement of the hotel.

“The components of the drink are what you’d see on the breakfast table and a night out at a nightclub like Tiffany’s,” Fogarty says. That includes coffee bitters, grapefruit liqueur and chamomile tea, its floral notes a nod to the Tiffany lamps that used to decorate the nightclub.

“And the nice thing is,” Fogarty adds, “you can have it morning, noon and night.”