Vancouver Bartenders Create New Spring Cocktails With Local Spirits

May 13, 2016

4 min read

A bartender wearing a brown apron pours a drink from a shaker into a glass filled with ice behind a bar counter with bottles and bar tools.

Some of the city’s best barkeeps are serving up spring in a glass, using locally-made mixers, tinctures and elixirs, and of course world-class spirits. We caught up with a few, who shared their secret recipes, and where you can enjoy them.

Juniper

Award-winning beverage manager Shaun Layton, formerly of L’Abattoir, and now dazzling us at Chinatown’s Juniper Kitchen & Bar; Layton has created what he calls the N.V. Mule. “NV means North Van, where I’m from. Also where Woods Spirit Co. Amaro is made, plus rhubarb is so hot right now.”

Copper mug with condensation and ice, garnished with two leaves, on a dark bar counter with bottles in the background.

N.V. Mule

45 ml Sid’s Vodka (Vancouver-made)
10 ml Aperol
10 ml Wood’s Amaro
10 ml Rhubarb syrup
30 ml Fresh lime juice
75 ml Dickie’s Ginger Beer (Vancouver-made)

Build ingredients over ice in a copper mug or rocks glass. Serve and enjoy.

Hy’s Steakhouse

Bar lead at Vancouver’s recently renovated upstairs (and seriously old-school stylist) cocktail bar, Ryan Shimozawa has created the Summer Song. He tells us this is “a bright, refreshing take on a Gin Sour where tart citrus and cucumber are balanced with Hendricks’s Gin and St. Germain elderflower liqueur.” The secret Vancouver-made ingredient? Bittered Sling grapefruit and hops bitters.

Cocktail glass with a frothy yellow drink garnished with lime peel on a wooden table with whole and sliced limes nearby.

Summer Song

1.5 oz Hendricks Gin
0.5 oz St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
1 oz Fresh lime juice
3/4 oz Cucumber simple syrup
1 Fresh egg white
3 Drops of Bittered Sling Grapefruit & Hops bitters

Add all ingredients to shaker tin except bitters. Dry shake vigorously. Add ice and wet shake. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime twist.

Donnelly Group

Trevor Kallies, Bar & Beverage Director, created his Russian Spring Punch with Absolut Elyx vodka, Vancouver’s Odd Society cassis, lemon juice, and the BC Okanagan’s Haywire ‘The Bub’, sparkling wine. This recipe is adapted from one created by legendary London cocktail icon Dick Bradsell. Kallies discovered the recipe at Saxon & Parole, in NYC on one of this cocktail “research” trips.

Wine glass with pink iced drink garnished with raspberries and lemon peel on wooden table.

Russian Spring Punch

1.5 oz Absolut Elyx vodka
1/2 oz Odd Society cassis
1/2 oz Lemon juice
1/4 oz Simple syrup
4 oz Haywire ‘The Bub’ sparkling wine

Shake and strain all but sparkling into a wine glass. Fill glass half with ice and top with 5oz Haywire. Garnish with lemon zest and 3 raspberries.

Royal Dinette

Kaitlyn Stewart has tended bar at Cactus Club, Black & Blue and Boulevard Kitchen & Oyster Bar, and won the top West Coast placement in the Speed Rack Canada Female Bartending Competition. Now at Royal Dinette in downtown Vancouver, she created a summery, Creamsicle-inspired cocktail that features local distiller Odd Society’s East Van Vodka.