Patti Smith has aged into the truly remarkable storyteller and poet we always, she always, knew she would. In her 2015 book M Train she reflects on her life and the lives of her favourite writers and poets while sipping on coffee. Sometimes the coffee is great and the setting is lacklustre. Other times it...
Bartender Atlas: We at Bartender Atlas have noticed that as cocktail competitions have started up again in person, some of the competitors (don’t worry, not you…probably) have been taking these competitions and the results too personally. I know I have only ever won 2 cocktail competitions (one was basically a Twitter competition and the other...
WHAT IS THE BLACKBIRD? Have you ever had a Blackbird? Do you know what goes into a Blackbird? Do you know who created The Blackbird and where? Our Josh decided a while ago to do some digging about this ubiquitous Toronto Industry handshake. Over the course of 5 installments in this audio documentary he...
I was really excited to use the Havana Club Cuban Smoky. At first I thought it might be best as a stirred sipper, but in the context of the 24 Hour Bar, I decided to play with the grassy, honey aromas in the rum and back them up with some spice and further toasty grain...
Faith Fyles was the first botanical artist for the Canadian government. Her job was to document plant species from across the country and then paint true-colour representations of them so they could be identified again later. She happens to have been born in Cowansville Quebec, where the Ungava Gin head office is located. 60ml/2oz Ungava...
The folx at Dairy Distillery recently asked us to create a drink with their new product, Vodkow Cream. I got excited because every other cream liqueur is flavoured (at least a little) and usually has a whisky as the base spirit. Vodkow Cream gives you simply Cream and Liquor. This opens a bunch of doors...
How many different expressions from different distilleries could you taste through in a week? What about in 5 days? What if you were in Northern Italy? On a recent trip there, we visited the home base for 7 different Italian spirit companies and the variety and quality of everything we tasted was impressive. A few...
I have been fortunate to be invited by Sprits of Italy to visit a bunch of Italian Distilleries in the last year. The most recent trip had me making a cocktail (which happily ended up being more like 50 cocktails) at Beer and Food Attraction. The parameters of what I had to do with the...
Funny thing running Bartender Atlas. We go to whatever cities we can as often as possible and then suggest some of the bars that stand out from that trip (you know, like Paris or Sydney or Mexico City) but we have never done one of these in our hometown. A few days before leaving to...
It was just over 18 months ago that I first heard the Bit By A Fox Podcast. Long time supporter of Bartender Atlas, and bartenders in general, Christine Sismondo was a guest and had drawn my attention to it. Throughout that episode I realized that the host, Prairie Rose, was not just doing this as...
