Video about Vancouver on my YouTube channel.
Not many cities have their own cocktails. Vancouver, Canadian Vancouver, has, although it regularly forgets about it. However, the Vancouver cocktail like Phenix disappears only to appear again. Interestingly, the cocktail is just only a little younger than the city – the cocktail is almost a hundred years old (or maybe already is, nobody knows when it was mixed the first time), and the city is just a little older than a hundred and fifty. Definitely, I cannot pass by the cocktail dedicated to the city that is so connected to me.
The history of cocktail Vancouver is very similar to many other forgotten and reborn cocktail classics.
Originally the recipe was published by Mitchell Publishing в 1925 в About Town Cocktail Book that described popular the town meal and cocktails. The recipe includes dry vermouth.
Vancouver
Dash of Orange Bitters
50% Gin
30% French Vermouth
20% Benedictine
Olive
– About Town Cocktail Book, 1925
Interestingly, that book has a riff on Vancouver with sweet vermouth instead of dry. It is named Fitchett after its author, Joseph A. Fitchett, the main bartender of Vancouver Club bar. The book author(s) mentions him as a person, who not only checked all cocktail recipes in the book but also added many of his own.
Fitchett
50% Gin
30% Italian Vermouth
20% Benedictine
Dash of Orange Bitters
Olive or Cherry
– About Town Cocktail Book, 1925
Vancouver was popular in the 1920-s but disappeared later to be reborn in 1954 in Sylvia Hotel as the hotel’s signature cocktail.
However, the recipe includes sweet vermouth, so under the Vancouver name, its brother Fitchett returned.
INGREDIENTS:
1.5 oz London Dry style gin such as Victoria Gin or Long Table Gin
0.75 oz sweet vermouth such as Punte E Mes or Odd Society Bittersweet Vermouth
0.25 oz or “a good splash” of Benedictine liqueur
2 dashes of orange bitters
—Original recipe from the Sylvia Hotel
In the 1960-s, Vancouver again diapered from the city’s bars as many other classic cocktails.
And like many others, it was reborn again in the 21st century.
In 2006, Steve Da Cruz, the bartender in Gastown (the most historical part of Vancouver) searched forgotten recipes in archives for something interesting. He met Josiah Bates, Vancouver’s old-timer, and an interesting character. Bates gave Da Cruz the recipe for the cocktail that he enjoyed in the 1950-s at Sylvia Hotel. A search in archives of City Hall showed that Sylvia Hotel was the first hotel in the city that obtained a cocktail lounge license, and for this occasion, Vancouver appeared on the menu as the hotel’s signature cocktail.
Until 2020, the year of Vancouver’s birthday was 1954, the place was Sylvia Hotel bar, and the vermouth in its recipe was sweet. In 2020, Scout Magazine brought to everyone info from About Town Cocktail Book 1925. Now we know that the cocktail is much older, and in its present appearance, it is Fitchett, not the original Vancouver. Well, evolution knows no mercy, the luckiest survive.
However, the art of cocktail-building always gives you alternatives. Originally, I found Vancouver at Difford, and he suggested using half of the sweet and half of the dry vermouth as a compromise. This I show in the recipe. If you prefer sweeter cocktails, use only sweet vermouth, if the opposite – only dry.
The main feature of the cocktail is its complex, strong herbal aroma, based on the combination of herbal aromas of gin, Benedictine, and vermouth. To give the cocktail opens in all its complexity I recommend using herbal-intensive variants of gin and vermouth. Benedictine is Benedictine.
The hybrid recipe of original Vancouver and Fitchett.
Ingredients:
1 2/3 oz / 50 ml London Dry Gin
2/3 oz / 20 ml Benedictine D.O.M.
1/2 oz / 15 ml Dry Vermouth
1/2 oz / 15 ml Sweet Vermouth
1 dash Angostura Orange Bitters
Process:
Stir all ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled glass.
Garnish with orange zest.
Drinkware:
Cocktail glass
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