Canada's only magazine dedicated to distillers, spirits and cocktail culture.
The Montreal bar scene has always been one of Canada’s best. But it was hit harder than most by the toughest COVID restrictions in the country. The city is rebounding with a number of great new cocktail spots that take us back to the future.
From the early days of the European fur trade to the current craft brewing boom, Winnipeg has been a beer city through and through. Fortunately for those who love a bone-dry Daiquiri or a proper Porn Star Martini mixed with local vodka, the craft cocktail scene is catching up. The city might only boast only a handful of bars where you can lose yourself in a superbly executed drink, but they are all fabulous in their own ways.
“After the first glass, you see things as they are. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.” — Oscar Wilde
Absinthe, the fabled Green Fairy that ran amok through Paris at the height of the Belle Époque, remains the most polarizing spirit on the bar shelf.
After working for five years as a bartender on cruise ships, Tiffany Davis is well acquainted with the benefits of cocktail bitters.
“I went through so many bottles of Peychaud’s,” she laughs. “It was the best cure for seasickness.”
Now safely moored on dry land, as a bartender at the Shangri-La Hotel Vancouver’s Market by Jean-Georges, Davis still relies on bitters, but primarily for their cocktail applications.
The Tasting Lounge at Odd Society Spirits in East Vancouver is a veritable beehive, buzzing with collaboration. Behind the bar, Kylie Bartlett shakes a frothy Tree Sum cocktail and strains it into a coupe glass. The neon-green libation was created by Vanessa Bourget, owner of Exile Bistro, and is made with a foraged-pine-needle, parsley syrup that Ms. Bourget trades to the craft distiller in exchange for the drink’s other key ingredient, Odd Society’s Wallflower Gin.
Part of the distillery’s Visiting Cocktail program, the forest-fresh Tree Sum is just one of many collaborations that allows Odd Society to live up to its name as an unusual innovator within British Columbia’s still somewhat oddly disconnected worlds of craft spirits and bartending.
As unlikely as it sounds, the infamous Chinese firewater baijiu—a pungent brew capable of bringing tears to eyes and setting throats ablaze—could be the hot new ingredient for bartenders.
Clear, potent (50 per cent-plus alcohol by volume) and often compost-pile fetid, the centuries-old spirit distilled from sorghum and other grains is also the world’s most consumed liquor.
Never heard of it? You’re not alone.
Kaitlyn Stewart slides a mason jar filled with a disturbingly yellow liquid across her bar at Royal Dinette in downtown Vancouver. I hope it’s not what it looks like.
“Milk liqueur,” she says, beaming proudly. “Double strained after sitting on the shelf for 10 days.”
In the mood for a Sazerac? How about a Negroni punch bowl mixed with local gin and vermouth, or a playful spin on Arctic Ungava with a dash of citric acid and spritz of Laphroaig perfume? Whatever your poison, it can be found in Vancouver, home to one of the most vibrant cocktail scenes in North America.