Rub shoulders with international bar stars and brand ambassadors at Vancouver Cocktail Week
Hisatsugu Saito mixes cocktails at the Nikka bar at 2024’s Green Garden Gala. Living Room Creative photo
Stop in for cinq à sept at one of Vancouver Cocktail Week’s participating bars and you never know who might be perched on the bar stool next to yours. It might be an out-of-town cocktail lover, a global brand ambassador or a rock star bartender from overseas. Hanging out with VCW visitors is one of the most exciting aspects of the whole week.
Here are just a few bar stars we know will be in town, and where you can see them — note that many will also be at the Black and White Gala.
Can’t decide what events to go to? Start with these
Experience top brands’ cocktail creations at Vancouver Cocktail Week. Living Room Creative photo
Each year there are those cocktail week events that you find yourself telling your friends about over and over—or that you forever regret having missed out on. Here are five that will be all the buzz this year; if you don’t have your tickets yet, what are you waiting for?
One of the world’s best whisky festivals is just a short ferry ride away from Vancouver, but you’ll have to act fast if you plan to get tickets. The Victoria Whisky Festival returns for its 19th year January 16 through 19 at the Hotel Grand Pacific. These four days of all things whisky kick off with the Canadian Whisky Awards and continue with masterclasses, whisky dinners and consumer tastings, featuring more than 200 whiskies from 50 distilleries.
The spirits have been scheming at the craft distillery
North Van’s Sons of Vancouver distillery has resurrected the short-lived Dark Manor Inn, the haunted house-themed bar that closed in 2019, for its 2024 Halloween celebrations. Photo courtesy of Sons of Vancouver
It’s alive! For the duration of spooky season, Vancouver’s dearly departed haunted house-themed cocktail bar has been resurrected as a pop-up experience at a popular craft distillery.
Sons of Vancouver has brought back The Dark Manor Inn, the quirky and short-lived cocktail bar that never made it to its first Halloween, by way of decor and inspired sips taken right from the late watering hole, which closed in the summer of 2019. (The Dark Manor, which was tied to Vancouver’s popular Shameful Tiki Room, ran out of a Fraser Street address that next became the Michelin Guide-endorsedSay Mercy! restaurant.)
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.
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.
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.
Dozens of events planned for the city’s inaugural celebration of cocktail culture, March 6 to 10, 2022.
Diageo World Class 2021 Bartender of the Year James Grant prepares the Pathfinder, a cocktail made with Johnnie Walk Black Label, Umé Shu plum wine, maple green tea cordial, cardamom bitters, Fever-Tree club soda, a rosemary sprig and a candied pine cone. Jana Bizzarri photo
At 5 p.m. on Wednesday, November 3, it became official: Vancouver is about to have its first ever cocktail week. We’ll drink to that!
From March 6 to 20, 2022, Vancouver Cocktail Week presented by The Alchemist magazine will celebrate the excellence of the city’s cocktail scene and the hospitality of its bars, hotels and restaurants.
Science of Cocktails, held February 6 at Science World, surpassed a cumulative milestone of $1.2 million raised for the Class Field Trip Bursary Program. Tara Rafiq photo
“This is just what we do,” says Trevor Kallies, president of the B.C. chapter of the Canadian Bartender Association and the creative force behind one of Vancouver’s most dynamic cocktail events. “This” isn’t just making great drinks, although it’s that, too. Mostly, though, it’s coming together to help those who need it most.
