Canada's only magazine dedicated to distillers, spirits and cocktail culture.
• 3 strawberries, divided
• 1 oz Botanist Gin
• 0.75 oz Youth Cordial (see recipe below)
• 0.75 oz lemon juice
• 2.5 oz Champagne or other sparkling wine
After months and months of being cooped up at home, there’s one thing we know for sure: We’re going to be spending a lot more time outside this summer.
So in the Spring/Summer 2021 issue of the Alchemist, we celebrate the patio.
The vibrant orange hue of an Aperol Spritz is as cheerful as a sunny day, its refreshing flavour as uplifting as happy hour itself.
The spritz combines effervescent Prosecco with bittersweet Aperol, an aperitif that is low in alcohol (only 11% ABV), but high in flavour. A subtler version of its cousin Campari, Aperol’s flavour derives from gentian, rhubarb, cinchona and other botanicals that whet the appetite and quench the thirst.
• 3 oz Prosecco
• 2 oz Aperol
• 1 oz soda
• Garnish: orange slice
Plexiglas is so 2020.
With dividers now the norm in restaurants and bars, more places are getting creative with their pandemic shields. As long as partitions are “washable, rigid and impermeable” and measure at least 1.2 metres from the tabletop, pretty much anything goes.
Michael Armistead thought organizing the 2019 World Class Canada finals in Whistler—where he had to transport all the bars, people and gear to the top of a mountain—was the hardest thing he’d ever do. Then along came COVID-19 and the 2021 finals in Toronto.
“Having done it, I know we can do anything now,” says Armistead, who oversees the Diageo World Class Canada Bartending Competition as National On Premise, Reserve and Sponsorship Manager. “With all of the external factors, this was the most complex event I have ever put together.”
BC Distilled—Canada’s largest spirits festival devoted exclusively to local artisan distilleries—remains on hiatus until 2022. But in the meantime, its organizers have partnered with five of the province’s top artisan distilleries to benefit a cause that has long been dear to their hearts.
Beginning Saturday, May 15, and for one month only, five limited-edition spirits will be made available exclusively from each participating distillery. $45 from each bottle sale will go directly to Pacific Assistance Dogs Society (PADS), which breeds, raises and trains fully certified assistance dogs for individuals with mobility and hearing disabilities and PTSD.
The hospitality industry has been among the hardest hit by the pandemic. Now a new initiative is aiming to help those who’ve experienced employment setbacks due to COVID-19. Call it a photo finish to a brutal year.
The food service industry support hub Breaking Bread, in collaboration with restaurateur Brad Roark (Nook, Oddfish) has launched a photography fundraiser called “Beyond the Plexi” that will raise funds to directly help hospitality works whose careers have been affected by COVID-19.
• 1 oz Siete Misterios mezcal (Doba Yej)
• 1 oz Aperol
• 0.75 oz lime juice
• 0.25 oz simple syrup
• Ginger beer
• Dash of crème de cassis
From the outside, it doesn’t look like much. An awning over a discreet door in a West Loop industrial neighbourhood is the only sign that some of the world’s most exciting cocktails await. But step inside The Aviary, and it’s all subtle opulence, not that you can really tell because it’s so moodily lit.
Besides, your eyes are mesmerized by the team of mixologists hard at work behind the barred windows of the cocktail kitchen, as if captured in a sort of gilded cage.