At TOCC, industry insiders get a taste of top trends
Toronto Cocktail Conference (TOCC) powered through its fifth edition in August, drawing bartenders to Toronto’s The Drake Hotel from far-flung places to exchange ideas, build community and to drink in plenty of education and tasting (including the world’s best Martini!).
U.S. Bartender of the Year Kapri Robinson led a panel on body inclusion at and beyond the bar, whisky expert Davin de Kergommeaux revealed some myths and legends of Canadian whisky and Tito’s stole the show with their magic show activation hidden away in the Drake Underground basement performance space. There were masterclasses on ice carving, building successful bar teams and groups, public speaking for bartenders and the magic through which oak transforms spirits like bourbon. A generous Bar Hop (the map makes a great Toronto self-guided crawl!) on the night of August 12 gave attendees deals and perks for visiting the 16 participating bars, who made donations to the Parkdale Food Bank. Here are just a few of our favourite sessions.
Victoria competition bartender Kate Chernoff represented for the West in co-presenting the Politics on Tap session, along with Calliope Draper from Edmonton’s Partake. The two led a candid, eye-opening talk on the need for bartender education about guest and staff safety. The same way bartenders are trained to make a proper Margarita, mixologists should be taught to protect guests being harassed or a staff member who’s bullied, the two contended. Gender-based and sexual violence, homophobia and transphobia, drink-spiking and other behaviours use alcohol as a tool of oppression, a legacy that’s as old as Canada. “Hospitality is a political act,” Draper declared, because it declares who is welcome where. While ensuring safe service can be seen as an “unglamorous” topic, when prioritized it results in better guest and staff retention and building positive and inclusive culture.
Chernoff and Draper related anecdotes from their own experiences, and shared resources for bartenders to explore new ideas and techniques for extending hospitality to everyone. These ranged from menu design to bathroom labelling and layout to bar heights and other accessibility features. Chernoff advocates for, and participates in, Good Night Out, a hospitality training program for creating safer and more accountable spaces. “Our work is more than just slinging drinks,” she said, it’s “tending” to the places, people, communities and futures of the nightlife world.
Canoe bartender Eleni Bock delivered a masterclass on sustainability and foraging. Bock, who won the Changemaker sustainability-focused competition by Deanston Scotch, is an avid forager who recommends Amy Stewart’s The Drunker Botanist as an entry point for the curious. Bock’s foraging tips included the 2/3 rule (leave 2/3 of the plant behind), careful picking for plant health, being mindful of endangered species and only harvesting in season and with permission—and only on Crown land, not private or in provincial parks and conservation areas.
For the bar, her advice included finding ways to use whole produce (including skins, fruit, seeds and stems), and techniques ranging from fermentation and clarification to making shrubs, preserves and acid-adjusted solutions to get the most out of what’s local and fresh. She served her Root Race cocktail of muddled wild blueberries with smoked spruce-tip vinegar, a smoky tequila tincture, Scots pine cone syrup and Deanston, garnished with dried pilot grape tendrils.
Canadian spirits veteran Beth Havers, a former brand ambassador for Glenfiddich, delivered an overview of the rise of no and low cocktails. “I’ve spent my career educating people about whisky, but now I’m excited to be educating people about a new opportunity to create no- and low-alcohol drinks,” she said. Havers showed stats that project a further one-third growth of the industry by 2026. “This movement is here to stay,” driven by everything from social sports to brunching, all-day events and session drinking, health consciousness, religious dictates and, of course, the seasonal sober-curious crowd. Havers, for one, rejects the word “mocktail.” “We’re not mocking anything.” She prefers no ABV, zero proof or temperance for the gentle section of bar menus.
She preached featuring fresh fruit, herbs and juice as well as homemade syrups and natural flavourings, noting that sugar is the top concern of health-conscious drinkers. Teas and coffee, botanicals, shrubs, saline solution and emulsifiers (like cream, egg white, aquafaba or milk wash) are ways to add layers of flavour and texture to non-alc drinks, she noted. Havers encouraged caution around things like housemade tonic (excess quinine can upset stomachs), charcoal (can interfere with medications) and techniques like fat-washing that can easily go awry and put guests in danger.
Havers used several sodas from the Fever-Tree lineup to make drinks like a juicy, low-alc Orangie Crushie with Aperol or a flavourful non-alc espresso soda.
Onetime New York bartender and Speed Rack champion Tess Ann Sawyer, now a brand representative for St-Germain in California, told the story of liqueurs through the ages. Tracing many famous liqueurs back to religious and medical origins, she revealed how everything from Bénédictine to Goldschläger, Chartreuse and Bols liqueurs came to be. She traced their development through the dark age of Prohibition through to their renaissance in the 1980s and ’90s in candy-coloured shooters and martinis, sharing a range of artfully displayed dried botanicals for smelling and tasting some of their storied ingredients.
Sawyer discussed various techniques producers use for infusion, distillation, macerating, muddling, compounding, percolating and maturing flavour into complex, flavoured and sweetened spirits. Known today as “bartender’s ketchup” for its ability to make almost any drink delicious, St-Germain did not disappoint in an accompanying tasting. The seminar was boosted by summer’s hit drink, the Hugo spritz (St-Germain bubbled with Prosecco and soda, garnished with mint).
Whether by serendipity or the deliberate aligning of stars, the two-time World’s Best Bar, London’s Connaught Bar arrived at The Library Bar at Toronto’s Fairmont Royal York hotel, providing a luxe coda to TOCC week. Global bar star Agostino Perrone (author of the award-winning The Connaught Bar: Cocktail Recipes and Iconic Creations) gave a masterclass in hospitality to local bartenders during the afternoon of August 14. Later that evening, he mixed his renowned Martinis (with choice of three of his famed flavouring tinctures, including the namesake Dr. Ago), rolling his signature bar cart around a packed house. Providing hands-on assistance was the Library Bar’s James Grant, onetime Edmontonian and the 2021 Global World Class Bartender of the Year.
—by Charlene Rooke
