Dan Cronin has a toddy for you, a toddy good enough to earn him and his downtown Sudbury bar, The Alibi Room, a spot as Canada’s representative in the Torres Brandy Zero Challenge.
The Torres Brandy Zero Challenge invites professional cocktail makers from across the globe to create a ecologically friendly drink using the brand’s signature brandy and to demonstrate how they can operate with a lower carbon footprint.
To win, “[competitors] will have to demonstrate how to run a cocktail bar with the lowest possible environmental impact and create the most innovative eco-cocktail,” Torres Brandy states on its website.
The prize is $34,557 CAD (€25,000) to be used on the project proposal and another $6,910 CAD (€5,000) for the individual presenting the initiative.
Cronin entered the competition last November and his Backyard Toddy was selected over the submissions of 30 other Canadian barkeeps.
The toddy uses Torres brandy (as the sponsor), honey from a local apiary, lemon juice and, the kicker ingredient: Labrador tea.
“First flush Labrador tea,” Cronin clarified. “The Labrador tea is one of those ingredients that we could very easily forage in the Sudbury wetlands – it grows wild. I mean, it's literally a weed. It's a rhododendron bush and it grows all over the wetlands.”
As for Cronin’s proposal on how to operate more sustainably, it involvs a rotating cocktail program (the menu changes seasonally depending on the ingredients available) using locally foraged ingredients, hence the use of Labrador tea in his toddy.
“So rather than getting foods from faraway to process into cocktail ingredients, my hope is to be able to use ingredients that grow literally in our backyards, and in the surrounding woods, in order to capture the flavors of our local land and have our drink program reflect the actual land on which it is being grown,” Cronin told Sudbury.com in a phone interview.
In addition to incorporating local ingredients into the menu, Cronin wants to employ people who are homeless in Sudbury by training them to forage for cocktail ingredients and paying them for their efforts.
“Our concept is that we would like to hire expert foragers to lead expeditions of the unhoused out into the woods, in order to find these cocktail ingredients to find these foraged foods,” Cronin explained. “So the experts will … teach the group what they're looking for and what can be gathered, and how it can be gathered ethically and sustainably. And then those people will go out and do the picking.”
Under the proposal, Cronin said the workers would be paid a cash honorarium for their day’s work. The format of his initiative was inspired by the Downtown Sudbury Cleanup Program, an initiative of the YMCA and the Downtown Sudbury Business Improvement Area (BIA) Association.
As for the competition itself, well that’s another story. Cronin would have been competing in the global finals in Barcelona this month against seven other national finalists had it not been for the current Ukrainian crisis.
“One of the eight national finalists, he's fighting a war. He's in Ukraine,” Cronin said. “So out of respect for that, the contest is just on hold.”
With the competition postponed and with the plight of his Ukrainian counterpart in mind, Cronin said the Alibi Room will be focusing on selling a couple new drinks at the bar with the proceeds from the drinks going toward Ukrainian charities.
“The Alibi Room is going to be making a couple of cocktails to benefit Ukraine, and we'll be funnelling some of the proceeds into some charities to try and help over there in the humanitarian efforts,” Cronin said.
To keep up with the Alibi Room and the upcoming drinks specials, visit their website here.