After a dinner date last year at trendy Mexican food spot in Toronto, my date and I decided to stroll a couple of blocks to a nearby cocktail bar for a libation of sorts.

The bar we found was dimly lit inside and not too crowded and thus seemed like a good spot for a couple of drinks and some additional conversation. You’ve possibly seen this type of bar before; it was the kind of establishment where heavily-tattooed bartenders wear tuxedo shirts and make their own bitters.

Being younger than I, my date was somewhat of an inexperienced palate when it came to alcohol. She confessed that she didn’t particularly love the taste of alcohol and was definitely not what you would call “a big drinker”. Despite this, I figured a bartender could use his or her skill and experience to craft something agreeable to her underdeveloped tastes.

Unfortunately however, this ended up not being the case, as neither establishment nor bartender were eager to cater to such a ‘novice cocktail palate’.

In the name of the latest hipster wizardry, it turned out that the place had hardly stocked any ‘conventional liqueurs’ whatsoever. You know, the colourful kind that are on the sweeter end of the spectrum and generally more agreeable when someone is just starting out with cocktails.

Though a Woodchip-Smoked Manhattan or a Chengdu Boulevardier may be great alcohol-forward cocktails for an experienced imbiber, it’s often not all that well-received by someone who is newish to cocktails.

Overly complex cocktails a-plenty these days

Yes, I’m all for conducting business in any way a proprietor sees fit. However, having the ability to offer some flexibility and catering to the customer tends to be a cornerstone of business. Our particular bartender that evening clearly seemed put out by thought of making something sweet and syrupy – and with vodka (which, despite being the most sold spirit type in the world, is often deemed uncool these days) is.

It was almost like he was a French chef who was being asked to make a grilled cheese sandwich with the crusts cut off. Or like a DJ in Ibiza who’s just been asked to play Hanson’s ‘MMMbop’.

Truth be told, this particular establishment was not the first time that I had experienced such a thing, as other new breed cocktail and mixology bars have failed to offer an approachable options or few for a younger, inexperienced, and at times female clientele.

As for myself, yes, I do enjoy a well made craft cocktail and will seek out a good Vieux Carré or Bronx cocktail – but I also enjoy sweet and frivolous things at times as well. Nowadays it seems that most bars have to stock five different types of sweet vermouth and thirty different obscure Italian digestifs, but a simple bottle of crème de menthe or blue Curacao is seen as strictly taboo for some reason.

Though I appreciate that a particular bartender has gone to the lengths of brining his own cocktail onions for my Gibson, how about my date who just wants a Cosmopolitan simply because she saw it on Sex and the City? Lately I’m finding more and more that mixologist bartenders are running the risk of getting overly fetishistic over their ingredients, and at times seem to develop tunnel vision-like focus on only particular classic cocktails or creating their own version of them.

I’m not saying that all bars have to go down the TGI Fridays route of blended sugar piles, but if you’re going to source out some obscure ingredients try a bottle of Crème de Noyaux to craft a fun Pink Squirrel.

I remember in my younger days going to bar that had been in business since the nineteen forties. My grandparents used to drink there when it was new. This bar had just almost every conceivable liqueur behind the bar and they could go to their recipe book to make just about anything.

Did they have all the rare and exotic old world bottles of Amari? No, but most cocktail creations use nothing more than a few drops of such stuff anyhow.

Certain liqueurs are also brightly coloured and when stacked up and backlit can give us a technicolor rainbow that dusty old brown bottles covered in labels unchanged since the mid 1800s never will.

Vodka is not a dirty word, and that bar I speak of is still in business today almost a hundred years later because they give their customers the drinks they want (and at a fair price too). There is nothing wrong with someone opening a bar to cater to like-minded people who want to celebrate the obscure and curate their own little world, but that still makes less business sense than being slightly more inclusive to those who may not share your same passion to the letter yet are looking to enjoy the wonderful world of cocktails.

Conclusion

In these trying times, I think factions of people may be less likely to want to test their constitutions with primarily powerful, alcohol-forward drinks and instead cut loose more frequently with a more hedonistic Seventies style of drink. The world has become very serious indeed as of late, and in response to such seriousness I think that at times people are going to simply want something that tastes good and also makes them feel good.

So when it comes to a good cocktail, let’s not take ourselves too seriously, ok?

In ordering a drink we are often trying to put an ordeal behind us, and would rather not face a new one when merely striving to unwind and leave behind the troubles of the world for a brief moment or two.

– Sean Douglass