How restaurants and bars collaborate with craft distillers to create custom sips

Vancouver hotspots like Osteria Elio Volpe and Caffè La Tana are authentically Italian, down to the tomatoes in the sugo. Yet your after-dinner limoncello might come from Esquimalt and your dark, bitter amaro from Nanaimo. The Banda Volpi restaurant group collaborates with B.C. distillers to create bespoke bottlings for its restaurants, and its “passion for creating and growing with our community is reflected in every bottle,” says group co-founder Paul Grundberg.
Group beverage director Amar Gill worked closely with Arbutus Distillery’s Michael Pizzitelli, “testing and making adjustments to sugar levels, flavour profiles and bitterness in order to achieve our vision of the amaro.” It’s flavoured with orange, vanilla and coffee to pair with signature desserts at each restaurant, and with Caffè La Tana’s renowned brews.

For a Sicilian-style limoncello, Gill partnered with Esquimalt Vermouth & Apéritifs, combining honey and almond notes with fig leaves from Michela and Quinn Palmer’s property. The award-winning makers are “the perfect partner to create a fun, seasonal and completely out-of-the-box limoncello,” says Gill, who notices that even customers unfamiliar with the digestivo tradition are “blown away” by the bespoke Banda Volpi bottlings. That’s the goal, he says. “We believe unique collaborations with local producers and ingredients create a deeper connection with our guests, staff and our community.”

Hospitality collabs with distillers can boost awareness and revenues for craft spirt brands, while creating unique local tastes for restaurants and bars. One of the first things award-winning bartender James Grant did, after becoming director of mixology at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, is collaborate with Dillon’s Small Batch Distillers on custom Quill Gin and Vodka bottlings. Quill Gin “brings exactly the flavour profile, proof and texture we want our signature Birdbath Martini to have. It stands up to dilution, maintains a powerful botanical profile, and just works so perfectly,” says Grant. His team specified an ABV range “and some principal flavour and aroma notes we wanted,” with the Dillon’s team bringing the expertise on “blending botanicals, but also balancing them within different spirit bases and ABV distillates to different effect.”
At the Pacific Northwest-focused Courtney Room in Victoria, bar lead Anton Wilson sought a like-minded collaborator in Stillhead Distillery founder Brennan Colebank. Together, they created The Courtney Room Bartenders Cask, a whisky bottling so bespoke it echoes the bar’s address (619 Courtney Street) in its overproof strength of 61.9 per cent ABV.

Wilson and colleague Eric Josephs visited the Duncan distillery, tasted from an array of whisky casks and “after a couple of weeks of blending, blind tasting and gathering opinions, we finally decided on our blend,” Wilson says. Island-grown rye whisky aged in Vancouver Island red wine barrels was blended with B.C. corn and malt whisky aged in ex-bourbon barrels, and finished in fresh Hungarian oak.
It’s a spicy sipper over ice, and punches through as a versatile “bou-rye” for many cocktails. Wilson uses it in an Old Fashioned-ish Maple Bay, with Canadian maple water. Half-size bottles sold out quickly to hotel guests, and bar visitors love the story of the whisky’s creation. Also adding to the hype: “This is a limited release whisky, so once it’s gone, it’s gone for good!” Wilson says. “Until batch #2 is made, that is.”
Stillhead’s Colebank was already running a flourishing private-cask program when he was approached by Victoria’s Wind Cries Mary and Clive’s Classic Lounge for custom spirits.
“Your hard work pays off when a bar commits to buying a whole cask of something you’ve made,” says Colebank, who counts The Courtney Room as his “special occasion” spot of choice. “We have a lot in common, the bartenders really understand flavour, and I can send customers there knowing they’ll have a 10-out-of-10 experience. I was happy to partner with them.”
It also helps Stillhead attract new fans. “I get people who have had such a great time at The Courtney Room making a pilgrimage up to Duncan to visit us,” says Colebank. “For other visitors, it’s a nice conversation to ask if they’re going to Victoria, and to send them to The Courtney Room to try a special cocktail.”
—by Charlene Rooke