This last weekend, the Victoria Film Festival organized and ran the Art of the Cocktail festival, a weekend devoted to tasty cocktails made with premium ingredients.
When I first heard about the festival about 2 months ago, I thought it would be interesting, but didn’t think much more about it. Then when information about some of the workshops started coming out, and I heard about some of the folks that the Festival organizers were snagging, I set aside the weekend, and determined that I would be buying tickets for as many of the events as I could muster.
Now I have been known to enjoy a cocktail or three! About 3 years ago, I started getting into enjoying more classic style cocktails, and more recently have been joining cocktail bloggers and mixologists for Thursday Drink Nights over at the Mixolosoum. There are also a couple of establishments in town recently delivering some excellent cocktails (Solomon’s and the recently refurbished Clive’s Classic Lounge ), feeding the need for tasty cocktails! Going to Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans has been on the wish list for the last 2 years, but not a possibility, so, Art of the Cocktail looked like the next best way to spend a weekend!
I spent the majority of my weekend at the Art of the Cocktail, and had originally figured I would be “going dark”, but actually ended up tweeting through the weekend (@toots11). Going back through my twitter feed, it appears that i had a few cocktails along the way!!!
I started the weekend with a workshop with David Wolowidnyk from West Restaurant about Cocktails of the 1890′s. David did an excellent job of providing takeaway materials for us, but the best part of the workshop was his preparation of the cocktails, and recounting some of his experiences behind the bar. He has such a thorough knowledge of cocktail history that it was a bit scary!
From there, I went to a workshop on bitters, which had a last-minute change of presenter. Lauren Mote, from the Refinery in Vancouver gave us an excellent overview of her approach to house-made bitters, made us all feel like it was pretty darn easy, and then blew us totally away with samples of some of her products in a cocktail!
The last workshop of the afternoon was with Ron Cooper, founder of Del Maguey Mezcals. For me, this turned out to the highlight of the weekend. I had read about his Single Village Mezcals from a few cocktail Bloggers, including Tiare over at A Mountain of Crushed Ice, and had wistfully thought it would be great to experience them, so when the workshop was offered, I jumped on a ticket! These did not disappoint — like tasting the nuances of single malts, these are rich, robust and complex in nature — and like no other spirit I have had. Like tequila, but so much more!!! And Ron is such an amazing storyteller, I could have sat and listened for another hour easily. We got to share 8 different Mezcals with Ron (and back to the first again), so I was definitely ready for dinner before heading to the tasting room for the evening.
The Saturday night tasting was well attended, and of course I had to taste the new orange bitters that Victoria Gin is producing, and the potato vodka being made out of Pemberton (I am not a vodka lover, but was impressed with this product). I also really enjoyed talking with the makers of Taboo Absinthe but got to taste many more of the Okanagan Spirits products. The Canados is awesome, and will be enjoying a permanent spot in my liquor cabinet, and IMO their Kirsch made with chokecherries is worth every penny! All of the tastings also had demonstrations running on the side, with opportunities to ask reps question, and sample some additional products such as the 150 anniversary Grand Marnier! (#nomnom!)
A weekend of cocktailing would not be complete without a late night of imibibing, and after the tasting, we went to Clive’s Classic Lounge to enjoy Negronis and Whisky Sours. The bar was being slammed that night! but Shawn showed no sign of flagging! Great cocktails. Unfortunately we spent too long there to make it to Solomons that night.
The next morning, I had two more workshops I was signed up for. A workshop on making mixes such as Ginger Beer and Tonic with Jeffrey Morgenthaler from Clyde Common in Portland. Aside from being a pretty entertaining guy, he started us all off with a Dark and Stormy (a pretty civilized Sunday noon tradition!), and left us all with some recipes and the feeling that this was something we could all do without blowing stuff up! Knowing now how easy it is to make soda in bottles, I’m stopping off within the week to stock up on champagne yeast!!
I had a bit of a hiatus between workshops to go and see the competition for the best mixologist in the Pacific Northwest. Great to see such a range of styles, and I was really impressed by the attention to detail we are getting by some of the top contenders! Congrats to David Wolowidnyk from West for the win, although Danielle Tatarin and Solomon (#2 and #3 respectively) were equally as impressive from my vantage point.
Finally, I rounded out the weekend with a workshop on whisky with Charlotte Voisey. While the focus on the technical discussion was on single malt Scotch, there were a few tasty cocktails made with Blended Scotch and Canadian Whisky — great examples of how much more versatile some of these products are than we give them credit for.
After this last workshop, I called it a weekend. Looking back through my twitpics, I drank a lot of cocktails over the two days, so I am definitely glad I stashed granola bars in my purse (they came in very handy just before heading in to tasted 8 mezcals!)
The event was very well organized, with rides home arranged for all imbibers who needed them! The event is a fundraiser for the Victoria Film Festival — for those of you following the BC Arts funding discussion, it is funding that is desperately needed to keep some of these smaller filmmakers going! I for one, hope that we have an opportunity like this next year! Our own 49North Tales!