Mia Stainsby: Cocktails come of age

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Lately, I find myself at dinners where cocktails and even whisky, not wine, are the main squeezes to food. It’s not surprising as Vancouver is a hotbed of cocktail culture and B.C. is a hotbed of craft distilleries, currently numbering about 85 and counting.

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“Vancouver’s one of the great cities for cocktails,” says Alex Hamer, founder of B.C. Distilled, the annual artisan distillery festival.  “It makes sense that it’s happening. The variety of spirits available is feeding into opportunities, especially at local restaurants. I’m not aware of too many cities doing it on this scale but B.C. leads the way in Canada by a long shot.”

There is, however, the matter of cost and labour — cocktails often cost more than a glass of wine.

“It’s not simply a matter of a sommelier selecting a wine,” says Hamer.

Still, in recent months I’ve attended four cocktail-matched dinners as well as a whisky-paired multi-course izakaya meal.

One was B.C. Distilled’s fourth annual Distillers Dinner, where B.C.-based cocktails were paired with a five-course dinner at Forage restaurant. Forage bar manager Peter Sullivan and his staff shook, rattled and rolled 350 cocktails for guests.

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“I believe we’re getting a little better every year,” Sullivan says, adding that cocktail matching isn’t as precise as wine pairings.

“With wines, there are straight up flavour profiles and certain flavour components. With cocktails there are lots of flavours, high alcohol, bitterness, spiciness. Spirits have high alcohol which can numb the palate.”

But unlike wine, cocktails are for manipulating — acids, syrups, botanicals, sparkling wine and other ingredients can help balance, match or contrast food flavours.

At the Forage dinner, the distilleries prepped ingredients for the cocktail pairings and handed them off to Forage bartenders to assemble.

My first course — maple-roasted heirloom carrots and beet tartare with shio koji duck yolk, grand fir gremalota and sourdough crackers — was served with the Pollinator Club, a cocktail created by Wayward Distillery with their raspberry gin liqueur, lemon juice, cucumber, mint and ginger syrup, topped with vegan foam. It called out the sweet, acidic beets.

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“The rule of thumb is like for like, weight for weight. That’s why the raspberry liqueur,” Sullivan says.

Goat cheese and squash agnolotti with oyster mushrooms, dan dan peanut jus and chili oil was paired with a Clear Skies cocktail by Woods Spirit Co., made with its Chiaro clear amaro, a classic amaro, honey syrup and lemon. The nut-based amaros connected with the peanut-based dan dan sauce, the strongest flavour.

A second course — braised elk shank with grand fir gremolata and salsify ‘hay’ — was paired with The Sun Pours Gold cocktail by Devine Distillery, with their Ancient Grains whisky, dry vermouth, honey simple syrup, bitters and a twist of lemon.

“It was the biggest, full-bodied dish and the cocktail is like a full-bodied Manhattan,” says Sullivan.

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Elderflower cheesecake dessert with vanilla-poached plums, haskap berry meringue and apple chips was served with Man of Habit by Odd Society Spirits with their Peat & Smoke whisky, creme de cassis, amaro, and tea syrup. The smoked peat in the drink went with the apple chips, Sullivan says.

“The peat was sweet on the nose and the tea syrup gave it a sweeter, fuller body.”

The idea, he says, is totally about fun.

“People aren’t writing notes. We’re learning and we’re not quite there yet.”

I attended another cocktail dinner recently at Botanist at Fairmont Pacific Rim. Award-winning head bartender Jeff Savage, a leader in this nascent trend in Vancouver, hosted the collaborative event with Masahiro Urushido of New York’s Katana Kitten, ranked No. 10 in the World’s 50 Best Bars.

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“Wines have had classic pairings throughout history, like Pinot Noir and duck, champagne and caviar. There’s history and context with wine,” says Savage.

“We’re forging that kind of history with cocktails. I love wine with food but cocktails can do some things that wines don’t. We can create textures and pairings that aren’t just based on flavours.”

And of course, there are infinite ingredients to heighten, contrast or marry with food flavours.

“Cocktail pairings have just started to be a thing. Maybe in another generation, we’ll have more history and context and classic pairings.”

At the dinner, chef Hector Laguna prepared a four-course Japanese menu in sync with Urushido’s Japanese influenced cocktails which focus on American classics with Japanese influences. Meanwhile, Savage’s cocktails were embedded with Japanese stories. His thinking and the muse for his Taishi and Nihonzaru cocktails for two of the courses, was a conceptual.

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Savage’s Taishi cocktail — meaning ‘ambassador’ in Japanese — was inspired by the collaboration of the Mexican, Japanese and Canadian backgrounds of the collaborating chef and two bartenders. It went with Laguna’s slow-roasted and beefy maitake mushroom with bonito, red miso, and shiso.

On the palate, the cocktail was a slow waltz of Woodford Reserve bourbon, nutty oloroso sherry, red miso caramel umami, toasty hojicha tea, and chocolate tincture with a touch of spice.

“That mushroom dish sung out with huge Japanese umami notes, but with a little spice,” says Savage. “The drink is like a Manhattan, stylistically.”

He named his Nihonzaru cocktail for the snow monkeys that bathe in hot springs in Japan. It was served with the yuzu meringue tart dessert.

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“The dessert had citrus but wasn’t overly crazy citrusy and I thought of what I’d want to drink in a hot spring,” says Savage. “I’d think something tropical and fresh.”

The drink was made with Herradura reposado tequila, roasted pineapple, sencha tea, coconut, lime, clarified milk and an infusion of buzz button. The latter, he explains, is a flower with a tingly effect when you eat it.

“It stimulates the appetite,” he says.

And for further effect, he garnisheed it with a kilometre leaf, which when chewed adds a peppery tingle.

Savage learned a couple of things from the collaboration with Urushida: a new technique for painting cocktail syrups onto the glass and a reminder of what makes for the electric atmosphere at the famed Katana Kitten.

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“It’s why we should do the job we do — the joy, the happiness, the interactions with people and being overwhelmingly excited about what we do.”

Botanist is big on cocktails, and bartenders and staff are equipped to help diners match a course or two or three.

“First and foremost, you need to approach food with respect and it’s a huge, huge bonus if the chef is willing to collaborate — that combination is critical,” Savage says.

In fact, last year, Botanist offered cocktail matched tasting menus where chef Laguna ceded control to Savage, matching his food to Savage’s cocktail lineup. Those intimate dinners in a private room next to the bar were sold out each week.

High calibre experiences are also key, he says.

“The more of those, the more these pairings are thought of as an option.”

 mia.stainsby@shaw.ca

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