Canada's only magazine dedicated to distillers, spirits and cocktail culture.
Katie Ingram is a sucker for history. The head bartender of Gastown’s L’Abbatoir is talking pisco, the South American spirit that shows up in sours the world over, and in no time at all, she’s taken us right back to the Ice Age.
Do you want to see the only way to shoot a bird?” asks Jorg Engel, owner of Maple Leaf Spirits, soon after we meet at his Okanagan distillery. I’m there with my daughter, Maya, and Engel is showing us the birds and chickens in the enclosure next to his tasting room.
I stare and my daughter’s eyes bug. Engel has a small green bird sitting on his finger and I’m wondering if I should cover Maya’s eyes. “Watch this,” he says, smiling gently. Without further ado, he cocks his finger like a gun at the little bird and quietly says, “Bam!” The bird swings and hangs upside down from Engel’s finger. A brief second of silence and then we burst into (slightly relieved) laughter. The bird is right side up again and chirping happily, obviously in on the joke.
Spain was foremost in Jamie Stolar’s mind when she took over as General Manager of Vancouver tapas restaurant Cabrito. Looking to pay homage in a cocktail, Stolar let her mind drift back to sunny days spent on the Balearic island of Formentera. “The island has rosemary shrubs growing all over the place,” she recalls. “With the intense heat, all you could smell was that rosemary.”
Bar Oso celebrates its one-year anniversary this ski season. In those scant twelve months, the Spanish-inspired tapas bar has become a must-visit destination in Whistler Village. Located around the corner from its sister restaurant Araxi, Bar Oso set out to give the mountain resort something completely different.
• 1 sugar cube
• Dash Angostura bitters
• 1 tsp Cognac or Grand Marnier (optional)
• Champagne or sparkling wine
• 1.5 oz gin or Cognac
• 0.5 oz freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 tsp simple syrup
• Champagne or sparkling wine
Family brought Yonah Sweetapple from his native Australia to Canada in 2012. He followed his brother Jacob (also a noted mixologist) to Vancouver, looking forward to being a proper uncle to Jacob’s kids. His own bartending career was well underway, from working his way through university everywhere from nightclubs to cocktail bars and restaurants. But it was in the two years before his move to Canada that, he says, his real passion for cocktails developed. “I really enjoy creating craft drinks, and I take a lot of pride in my work,” he smiles.
Almost a decade ago, Peter Hunt and his family made a decision that changed their business model forever: they bought a still. The family-run winery soon recreated themselves as Victoria Distillers, and their gin quickly became one of B.C.’s best-recognized local spirits.
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.
Close to 3,000 bartenders around the world vied to be the best, but in the end it was the U.K.’s Grant Murray who was named winner of the prestigious 2016 Peter F. Heering Classic Challenge at London Cocktail Week in October.
Vancouver entrant, Andrew Schneider, bartender at Vij’s, advanced to the final round of the competition, held as part of the World’s Best 50 Bars gala countdown, and judged by spirits luminaries, David Wondrich, Lauren Mote, Simon Difford, Charlene Dawes, Hamish Smith, and host Andrew Seymour.