Remember the ’80s, when drinks were sticky and sweet and had names like Sex on the Beach, Creamsicle and Blue Hawaii? We see the Excess Era recycled continually in fashion but so far we have avoided a return trip to Long Island Iced Tea and its ilk.
And yet it now seems the ’80s — the 1880s, that is — are making a comeback at the cutting edges of Western civilization (London and New York) and at smart bars around town.
There’s been a pronounced return to the classics of cocktail culture — 19th-century potions, heavy on the gin and brown liquors, laced with old-fashioned tastes like bitters and flower extracts. Often, they favour all-natural, preferably organic, ingredients. And the recipes forsome of these complicated concoctions would not look out of place in an alchemy text.
One might think we reached the zenith of this trend with the $45 hickory-smoked Vanilla Manhattan at Bar Chef on Queen West.
But now the race is on among the city’s leading bar stars to come up with their own inventions — aged in wooden casks.
“At the end of the day, it is quality over quantity,” says Robert Montgomery, the beverage director at the Miller Tavern on Yonge St. (just south of the 401). “People are drinking less and drinking better,” says Robert Montgomery. (And not a second too soon: This month the tavern opens two new locations —
The Fox and the Miller Tavern downtown, both at the foot of Bay Street.) Montgomery sees barrel aging appealing to “the hipseter crowd — early adapters, bleeding-edge types.”
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