A story rooted in the tropics

You may not know it, but the adventure of Monsieur Cocktail was born somewhere on a plane in December 2011...

Christmas 2011. On a whim, I get on a plane to the beaches of India with my great boyfriend Simon. Two weeks ago, I tasted my first Old Fashioned in a restaurant in Montreal and my curiosity for cocktails was high and superseded everything else. So it was just before I left that I got my hands on a purple-covered cocktail book that would forever change the course of my professional (and many nocturnal, let's face it) life.

In this book whose name I forget (and which I will forget in one of the hostels during my stay), we talked about the importance of fresh ingredients, big ice cream and above all, we talked about a lot of quantity. Even before entering the world of mixology, I read that we should never drown our spirits with juice or soft drinks and that we had to respect the following simple formula: alcohol + syrup + lime or lemon juice.

A whole world had just opened up to me, and I quickly understood that syrup would occupy a place of choice in my arsenal since it was it that balanced the acidity of lime or lemon, but also the one that brought the most flavor to accompany the base.

12 years later, having perfected the art of syrup to reach the top, I am proud of these new tropical flavors that were developed with his travel memories in mind: the mango lassi drunk in Goa, India, the wonderful Pina Colada from an unnamed bar on the beach in Cayo Blanco and that Hurricane drunk at Toronto's Shameful Tiki Room on a hot summer night.

Because sometimes you just need to take a sip to travel south.

Patrick