“If you were to ask me if I'd ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I'd have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.”
- Luis Bunuel
So what the hell is grenadine anyway?
That heavy sugar syrup that sits in the bottom of a tequila sunrise, masking the taste of the tequila and orange juice, has a long and varied history. Not that it’s evident from the cheap and nasty stuff most bars stock – along with other store bought horrors such as lime bar mix and bitters. There just has to be something better. The cocktail can be more than that.
Christine Sismondo, author of Mondo Cocktail, is hoping, along with her business partner Sue Ketcheson, to change the perception of mixers and also the culture of the cocktail. The two are launching In Our Cups a consulting and concoction business that should change the way Torontonians perceive the mixed drink.
In fact – Toronto is missing out on a larger drink resurgence happening in other world capitals. “We don’t have that renaissance of cocktail culture that’s happening in London and New York, San Francisco, even in Chicago,” Sismondo said. “People are using fresh ingredients and taking things incredibly seriously. In New York and London there is a mise en place behind the bar. People are making ingredients from scratch, bitters and syrups, and building incredible cocktails.
“What’s going on in New York is a kind of pre-prohibition cocktail movement. The idea is that when prohibition happened this stuff was ruined. After prohibition was repealed the people who came back to the bar business weren’t trades people, that knowledge was lost. So they’re saying forget the daiquiris of the 50s and 60s and let’s see what was going on before prohibition.”
She says Toronto is failing at this and she doesn’t understand why. “We have the ingredients, we have the high-end restaurants. There is an emphasis on wine and food, but the bar is ignored.”
There are some exceptions she said, Splendido with its champagne cocktails, Southern Accent, the Paddock and Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar were mentioned. But it needs to go beyond places where terroir is king, she said.
So with Sismondo’s vast knowledge of mixology and Ketcheson’s skill in the kitchen – Sismondo called her friend a “genius” at extracting flavours – In Our Cups was born.
From the taste of things, Ketcheson is a genius with essential oils and herbal extracts. She comes by her love of extracts honestly in her other life as an aromatherapist. “There are so many different flavours out there that people here have never experienced,” Ketcheson said. “I’ve been working with a lot of Chinese herbs and the flavours are amazing, intense.”
One of her biggest challenges was creating an all natural grenadine. The name "grenadine" comes from the French word grenade meaning pomegranate. That’s what grenadine originally was, an extract of pomegranate.
In Our Cup’s grenadine is decidedly brown in colour rather than the store-bought bright red, but tastes like pomegranate rather than high-fructose corn syrup. “The commercial products don’t contain any pomegranate at all,” Ketcheson said. In Our Cups is also producing, using local and organic ingredients whenever possible; sour mix, sangrita, lime cordial, chile syrup, Seville orange syrup, ginger syrup, hibiscus syrup (available in season) , brandied cherries, and candied ginger.
Don’t expect these cocktails to taste like the liquid candy available at every martini bar in the city. Some of these drinks are downright dirty. So dirty in fact that over the course of our Cinco de Mayo interview I had five margaritas made with a dark lime cordial and salty citrus foam. I imagine it’s the kind of drink Hemingway would have liked.
Sismondo and Ketcheson are hoping to have their mixers in bars around the city soon, but for a preview the Beaver on Queen Street has already started using them.
So take up the cocktail call to arms, surely we can compete with Chicago.
Rod Weatherbie is a Toronto-based journalist. He is also partly responsible for Gadzooks! an online arts zine.
