Vancouver Cocktail Week

Tickets are on sale now for Vancouver Cocktail Week 2025!

December 1, 2024 No Comments

The city’s best party returns March 2 to 9 with all your favourite events and brand-new ones, including the unmissable Black & White Gala.

Tickets are now on sale for the fourth annual Vancouver Cocktail Week presented by The Alchemist magazine. Save your seat for the best seminars, most delicious cocktail-paired dinners and unmissable signature events like the closing Black & White Gala.

“We are proud to promote and support our incredible cocktail community and culture here in Vancouver. VCW’s success is due to the collaboration between all of us in this industry—the bartenders, the venues, the brands and the consumers,” says The Alchemist publisher, VCW event producer and co-founder Gail Nugent.

Vancouver Cocktail Week

Vancouver Cocktail Week is back in 2025!

November 6, 2024 No Comments

Tickets go on sale December 1 for the March event

Raise your glasses! Vancouver Cocktail Week presented by The Alchemist magazine returns for its fourth annual round of spirited fun, March 2 to 9, 2025.

This highlight of the March calendar is filled with seminars, master classes, tasting events, cocktail-paired dinners, neighbourhood crawls, guest shifts and spectacular parties, all supported by dozens of brand sponsors pouring their best products for you. Expect to see all your favourite local bartenders in action, as well as top talent from across Canada and around the world.

Vancouver Cocktail Week

Cocktails! Brunch! Music! So much fun!

March 14, 2024 No Comments

Vancouver Cocktail Week 2024 began and ended with the signature events you wouldn’t want to miss

Vancouver’s own Evelyn Chick dropped by from Toronto to chat about her new book and serve up her Green Haka Cooler at the Signature Sunday Cocktail Brunch. Gail Nugent photo

From seminars to neighbourhood crawls to cocktail-paired dinners and bar-star guest shifts, Vancouver Cocktail Week presented by The Alchemist has something for everyone who enjoys raising a glass or two. But the biggest, best, most unmissable parties are the signature events that open and close the week—and this year was no exception.

Vancouver Cocktail Week

Sipping, Dining and Learning at Vancouver Cocktail Week

March 13, 2024 No Comments

The Baijiu seminar by Hope & Sesame co-founders Bastien Ciocca and Andrew Ho ran through the major styles of baijiu, and how to use it in cocktails. Charlene Rooke photo

The Seminars

Chinatown speakeasy Laowai opened its freezer-style door to an international cohort of bar colleagues, who gave daytime seminars recounting their personal journeys to world-class status, then held court in the evenings with guest shifts showcasing their creations.

On March 3, the co-founders of Chinese bar Hope & Sesame, hospitality school pals Bastien Ciocca and Andrew Ho, recounted their journey bringing the first speakeasy-style modern bar to southern China, in Guangzhou. Today, they have several bars plus a spirits consultancy (catering to the likes of Ralph Lauren’s hospitality group) in their mini-empire, ranging from café-fronted speakeasies to heritage-themed Chinese bars and elegant, tasting-menu cocktail flights. Their San You bars feature all-Chinese spirits and produce, a perfect segue to their brief session on baijiu, the Chinese spirit in which Laowai specializes (with 50-plus bottlings, the largest selection in Canada). Illustrated with bottlings from SinoCan agency, Ciocca and Ho ran through the major styles of baijiu, and how to use it in cocktails. Bartenders in the room took notes on creating split-base cocktail and using baijiu smartly, as in Hope & Sesame’s famous Moutai Milk Punch, a clarified cocktail with Black Forest Cake flavours, served later that night of Laowai.

Vancouver Cocktail Week

Cheers to the VCW community

February 23, 2024 No Comments

Vancouver Cocktail Week features events for everyone, in support of the city’s hospitality industry

Vancouver’s Kaitlyn Stewart was the World Class Global Bartender of the Year in 2017. Living Room Creative photo

Unlike some boozy events, Vancouver Cocktail Week isn’t just a big party (though it offers plenty of opportunities to raise a glass and get your ya-yas out). And unlike other boozy events, it’s not a trade show where you wander from booth to booth sampling wee sips of things (though it does feature loads of exciting new spirits, bitters and cocktails to taste and try).

What Vancouver Cocktail Week is, is a celebration of community, and not just the community of talented bartenders and industry professionals in this city. It’s also a celebration of you, the guests they serve, the whole reason the industry exists in the first place.

That’s why VCW events take place, not in a convention hall, but in the bars and restaurants where the city’s best bartenders can show you what they do best.

And it’s also why VCW24 has something for everyone, whether you are only just discovering cocktails or want to add to your collection of recipes for your next dinner party, expand your knowledge as an industry professional or simply enjoy a fun night out on the town.

Here are just some of the exciting experiences you can discover at VCW24, March 3 to 10.

Vancouver Cocktail Week

Taste the World with these Vancouver Cocktail Week events

January 30, 2024 No Comments

One of the most exciting aspects of the third annual Vancouver Cocktail Week is the unprecedented opportunity it offers for guests to taste international flavours and meet bartenders from far-flung regions of the planet. Here are just some of the festival’s great dinners, seminars, guest shifts and other events that bring the rest of the world home.

Vancouver Cocktail Week

Discover delightful drams for every type of whisky lover at Vancouver Cocktail Week

January 23, 2024 No Comments

There is a whisky for everyone at Vancouver Cocktail Week 2024. barmalini/iStock/Getty Images Plus photo

Whether it’s sweet, vanilla-scented bourbon, spicy rye or smoky peated malt, we love whisky, the “water of life” that transforms humble grains into sophisticated spirits. And one of the best places to sample whisky of all sorts—and the drinks in which it shines—is at the third annual Vancouver Cocktail Week, March 3 to 10.

Sip, sample and learn about whisky at these events.

Vancouver Cocktail Week

Global bar stars shake up Vancouver Cocktail Week 2024

January 12, 2024 No Comments

Find these top bartenders at guest shifts, seminars and the Green Garden Gala.

From left: Jesse Vida, Tato Giovannoni, Bastien Ciocco and Diego Cabrera are among the many international bartenders attending Vancouver Cocktail Week 2024.

Vancouver Cocktail Week is your best chance to meet — and learn from — some of the world’s greatest bartenders, and you don’t even need to get on a plane to do it. From March 3 to 10, the third annual VCW welcomes some of the most skilled, talented and highly awarded barkeeps from London, Singapore, Argentina and other corners of the planet, and you will definitely want to sample what they are shaking up.

Among them is the legendary Jesse Vida, famous from NYC’s The Dead Rabbit (named World’s Best Bar by Tales of the Cocktail) as well as his days as head bartender at World’s 50 Best Bars-recognized Atlas in Singapore. He’s now partner in the agave-forward Singapore speakeasy Cat Bite Club, and ready to share all his hard-learned lessons at a seminar and guest shift at Laowai.

Vancouver Cocktail Week

Vancouver Cocktail Week tickets are on sale now!

December 1, 2023 No Comments

The city’s best party returns March 3 to 10 with all your favourite events and brand-new ones, as well as more international bar stars and the can’t-miss glam of the Green Garden Gala.

Vancouver Cocktail Week kicked off in style at the media launch party on November 28. Living Room Creative photo

Tickets are now on sale for the third annual Vancouver Cocktail Week presented by The Alchemist magazine. Save your seat for the best seminars, most exciting cocktail-paired dinners and unmissable signature events like the closing Green Garden Gala.

Vancouver Cocktail Week

Vancouver Cocktail Week is back!

November 14, 2023 No Comments

Tickets go on sale December 1 for the March event

Pro tip: Book March 3 to 10, 2024, off work right now. That’s when Vancouver Cocktail Week, presented by The Alchemist, returns to town, and you won’t want to miss one spirited minute of it.

The city’s third annual celebration of Vancouver cocktail culture will have even more bar stars from Canada and around the world shaking things up with planned takeovers and mid-week pop-ups at Vancouver’s most popular cocktail venues.