Canada's only magazine dedicated to distillers, spirits and cocktail culture.
The Alchemist magazine team has had so much fun hosting Vancouver Cocktail Week, we’re bringing the good times to Toronto. This fall, we’re launching the first annual Toronto Cocktail Festival, to be held October 22 to 26, 2025.
Summertime means camping and picnics and lounging in the back yard—or the back country. Now you can bring your favourite cocktails with you, thanks to the folks at Yeti.
Umami, the savoury so-called fifth taste after sweet, sour, salty and bitter, is having a moment in the world of drink. Think Dirty Martinis, whisky made with mushrooms, gin with savoury herbs and olives, or cocktails shaken with miso, saline or soy sauce.
Now distillers are turning to the sea for what might be our favourite umami-rich ingredient yet: the oyster.
Summertime and the living is lazy, or at least it should be. So when it comes to our favourite cocktails of the season, we not only crave something light and thirst-quenching, we also want it to take as little effort as possible, but maybe just a bit more effort than cracking open an RTD.
Enter the spritz. The Aperol spritz has been ubiquitous for more years than we like to count; last year, summer was all about the Hugo spritz, which is made with elderflower liqueur rather than Aperol.
After four years spent building Toronto’s Bar Pompette into the nation’s No.1 bar (and currently No. 7 on North America’s 50 Best Bars), cofounder Hugo Togni is now moving on.
The Pompette team has become known worldwide for their ability to train staff, and Togni feels the time has come to spread some of that magic beyond the bar’s walls. He plans to help other businesses—namely fine-dining restaurants—through his next venture, Mirabelle Beverage Consulting.
The Dirty Martini is just the start. These days we love our savoury cocktails and the unexpected ingredients that add those rich umami flavours. Here are just five we’ve sampled recently in Toronto bars.
At the new Ombré Restaurant in Tofino, the vibe is sunny Mediterranean, but that doesn’t mean the team doesn’t know how to deal with rainy days. After all, this charming village on Vancouver Island’s west coast sees over 300 centimetres of rain each year even without an atmospheric river.
Much has been written about the challenges facing farmers in North America; less has been done to solve them. Now a new initiative in the United States, with big names and big money behind it, aims to change that. And who knows? It might inspire action on this side of the 49th parallel, too.
Yeti is known for making coolers that keep ice cold for days. But their Rambler beverage buckets are just as handy. They’re big enough to hold three bottles of wine, with a handle that makes them easy to carry and double-wall vacuum insulation that keeps ice frozen and drinks well chilled. Available in an array of designer-friendly colours. Now that’s, well, cool. Yeti.ca
Congratulations to Fraser Crawford! The bar manager at Kissa Tanto has just been named the winner of the 2024 Michelin Guide Vancouver Exceptional Cocktails Award, adding even more lustre to the Chinatown restaurant’s glittering star.