I look at cocktails as opportunities to create micro-sensory pleasure experiences that can be enjoyed with friends, family, lovers and foes; where uninhibited dialogues and reflections about anything and everything can emerge. These cocktails are created to celebrate the unique nature of Spring in Montreal: tumultuous, yet classically tender-hearted, shy and fleeting.
Like a ballet, mixing cocktails is about poise and ease. It is about minute balances of aromas and sensations, and an understanding of your ingredients. Show no fear! Try new liqueurs and make fussy, time-consuming garnishes. You have nowhere to be, so, take your time and practice until you see your friends again.
Maple’s Knees
This gin sour is inspired by images of white lace dresses, flower girls in a spring meadow, with a hint of the cabane à sucre. Floral gin and tart lemon meet the light sweetness of maple syrup and fleeting notes of bergamot and violet.
3/4 oz Violette Gin
juice of ½ lemon
1.5 tsp maple syrup
fresh orange peel
ice
Shake with ice and strain into coupe glass rimmed with orange peel.
Asparagus Gibson
This Gibson is inspired by the salty, rocky, frozen, thawed and refrozen ten times again roads of Quebec and one of the first vegetables available: asparagus. Gin forward, supported by sweet small flowers of the alpine Dolin dirtied with a splash of asparagus brine, then brightened with a zesty lemon twist. There’s no shortage of recipes online for
quick pickled asparagus. Now’s the time to up your pickle game!
1 oz Tangueray gin
¼ oz asparagus quick pickle brine
1 spear quick pickled asparagus
¼ oz Dolin vermouth
fresh lemon peel
Ice
Swirl with ice and strain into 7 oz glass rimmed with lemon peel and a third full with ice. Garnish with lemon peel and spear of pickled asparagus.
