House Made – 3.14.11
After arriving safely to Vancouver yesterday, I expected the beginning of Tales Vancouver was going to be a leisurely affair … check into the hotel, check in at the registration desk, have some down time and head out to the opening gala. In true Tales of the Cocktail spirit, nothing here is done by half measures!
After checking in at about 3pm, it became evident that this was off to a rolicking start already. Grand Marnier and Don Julio had prepared welcome cocktails and demos for people right at registration, and I was also informed that Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (the makers of Root and Snap) were also hosting a hospitality suite up in one of the Fairmont Pacific Rim’s corner suites. What’s not to love about that! They had prepared a flip and a punch to showcase Root and Snap respectively, and had a table full of cocktail ingredients for people to whip up their own creations using the two spirits as inspiration.
So otherwise occupied with sampling new products and meeting new people (from as far away as Halifax and Toronto and farflung US states!), it turned out there was not much to do but to gird my loins and gear up for a long, eventful night of cocktailing!.
The highlight of the evening was the opening reception at the Terminal City Club — a black and white affair hosted by Gibson’s whisky in a fabulous event space!
We received a warm welcome from Mrs Cocktail (Ann Tuennerman, founder of Tales of the Cocktail), and the festivities began. Several cocktails had been created to showcase Gibson’s whisky, and we were also presented with the official Tales on Tour in Vancouver cocktail, “the Dalhousie” cocktail — a delicious combination of plum infused whisky cognac, ginger syrup and Unicum — a bold cocktail in the spirit of the Manhattan, but reflecting Canada through and through (History trivia here: the Dalhousie was actually a railway connecting Canada from east to west).
With the booze flowing freely, the folks at Tales are making sure we’re fed — we were pleasantly surprised to see poutine and pulled pork sliders at the ready to have with our cocktails!
After wrapping up a great evening catching up with old friends and meeting lot of new ones, we left the Terminal City Club and decided to follow the herd — to the Diamond. a whisky sour and a shot of Fernet Branca later, it was time to call it a night and get ready for a full day of cocktail workshops. Where else do you get to reconnect with folks like Jim Romdell and Rocky Yeh, fresh off their infamous barback tour, or meet a micro-distiller, or the owner of a NY Times news-making bar in Tacoma?
And so, to bed — Chris McMillian and the historic cocktails of New Orleans await first thing in the morning!
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