License to Kill: BarChef’s Late Harvest Vesper
In his 1953 book Casino Royale, author Ian Fleming has his hero, James Bond uncouthly instruct a bartender on how to make a Vesper Martini: “Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?” When Bond’s CIA buddy, Felix Leiter comments on the concoction, 007 expounds, “I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold, and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink’s my own invention.” With that, the cocktail leapt from page to fame. Bond named his cocktail for his then-current love interest.
In the cocktail world, BarChef’s Frankie Solarik attained his license to kill when he and co-owner Brent VanderVeen launched the BarChef Project Toasted Old Fashioned in 2017. Now, with a 2019 Vintage Late Harvest Vesper he shows he’s not afraid to use it. Solarik’s Vesper is killer.
Solarik’s love interest is a high octane spruce tip gin made at Concord, Ontario’s Still Waters Distillery. “We had been working with spruce tip infused gin for a while at the bar,” Solarik points out. “It’s one of my favourite infusions. The Vesper was a great composition to feature that infusion. It’s been going over very well at the bar.” Still Waters makes the gin using a proprietary recipe designed explicitly for this ready to drink cocktail.
Spruce tips picked in the spring have a vibrant forest green-resin nature balanced by a bright citrus note with floral accents. Solarik wanted to showcase and push those tones in the gin and immersed himself in selecting botanicals to tease out the desired ratio of essential oils. On its own, the high-proof gin features notes of thyme, spruce, forest greens and juniper laced with floral accents and accompanied by a healthy citrus spritz. “When we serve a Vesper at the bar, we garnish with grapefruit zest. We wanted to incorporate that in the gin along with orange,” says Solarik. Better than any Bond gadget, the gin was designed so all of these intricate flavours complement the cocktail’s other components. “The exciting part about this cocktail is that it’s refined and elegant but loaded with flavour. I am obsessed with this cocktail.”
Layered within this cohesive elixir are some unexpected surprises. The first, Kina Lillet is replaced with a local Canadian Late Harvest Vidal wine. When the grapes reach their ultimate ripeness, they are left on the vine to dehydrate. The process concentrates the sweetness of the juice to ecstatic levels. “It’s a wine that Ontario produces very well,” explains Solarik. “It can be used as an accent liqueur and a vehicle of length in the cocktail. It’s a technique we’ve been using at BarChef, where we substitute Lillet or Vermouth with late harvest wines. It adds beautiful tropical fruit notes such as quince and lychee with an almost elderflower tone to it. It’s one of my favourite ingredients to work with and pairs amazingly well with the gin’s spruce and thyme flavours while adding a nice viscosity to the cocktail without being overly sweet.”
A Vesper is not a Vesper without a bitter component, so a blend of BarChef’s Bay Leaf and Lavender Bitters adds this finishing touch. The bitters delicately balance caraway, green fennel seed, green cardamom and a delicate caraway smoky component. Bay leaf flowers bring a distinctive fragrance that connects the gin’s green notes effortlessly.
“Our Vesper embodies the opposite side of the spectrum of what the Toasted Old Fashioned achieved, but it still has the complexity and essence of walking into an antique Persian perfumery with pastel white tones, lavenders and green notes. It’s insane,” explains Solarik proudly. A drop of simple syrup gives the cocktail additional weight to support the higher alcohol percentage that makes it ideal for slow sipping.
The Vintage Late Harvest Vesper retails for $26.95 and pours six cocktails. It is large, very strong and very well-made. Enjoy it chilled, straight over ice or with tonic.