Canada's only magazine dedicated to distillers, spirits and cocktail culture.
It’s not about the fancy glassware, or the high-tech centrifuge, or the exotic, impossible-to-source-spirit, not any more. It’s all about the people.
“Now that it’s no longer an arms race to assemble the cocktail, the other things matter more,” says Jim Meehan.
It’s the story that everyone in the BC booze industry is buzzing about: On Jan. 18, the provincial government conducted four simultaneous Prohibition-style raids on establishments in Victoria, Nanaimo and Vancouver and confiscated tens of thousands of dollars worth of liquor.
Their target? Bottles of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s unique (and expensive) whiskies.
Their reasoning? Although the bottles were shipped to B.C. under proper channels and all appropriate taxes paid, the licensees bought them through private retailers instead of government stores, which is not allowed.
Raise your glass to the end of 2017, a year that brought us one disaster after another, from raging wildfires to the near-daily perp walk of sexual predators. Between all that and the inescapability of frosé, it’s a year we’re mostly happy to forget.
And so we look forward to 2018. We checked in with some of the city’s top bartenders to discover what’s shaking for the New Year.
The holiday season cries out for festive bubbles, for brunch-time mimosas and kir royales, for corks flying at midnight, for French 75s and Champagne cocktails just about any time.
But of all the bubbly concoctions, there is no more festive fizz than a grand Champagne punch.
2 cups (500 mL) brandy
16 dashes Angostura bitters
½ to ¾ cup (125 to 180 mL) oleo saccharum (see method below)
2 bottles sparkling wine such as cava or Champagne
Well, you get the picture. Wondering what to get the cocktail aficionado on your holiday list? Start right here.
Fa-la-la-la! It’s beginning to taste a lot like Christmas at The Cascade Room, where the holiday cocktails are merrily flowing.
A new artisan distillery opening up in B.C. isn’t exactly news these days. There are already 51 of them around, with another 13 in the works and as many as 80 licences floating around out there, according to B.C. Distilled founder Alex Hamer.
What is news, though, is when that distillery is co-owned and operated by one of Vancouver’s best bartenders.
“Twenty years ago in Mexico, mezcal was for poor people. Fifty years ago it was for poor people in the villages,” says Mica Rousseau. “Now it’s a super trendy spirit in the big food and cocktail cities. Now we are producing mezcal not for the Mexican market, but for the rest of the world.”
November is no one’s favourite month. It’s dark, cold, wet and gloomy, and it isn’t quitethe month that comes with presents. Maybe that’s why it’s such a great month for drinking. I mean, maybe that’s why it’s such a great month for new product releases and exciting social events, starting with these.