The Canyons Village Management Association inaugural winter cocktail contest comes to a close on Saturday and two entries have pulled ahead of their competitors, vying for first place and a $500 prize.
This event is a sister contest to the Park City Area Restaurant Association’s summer cocktail/mocktail contest, which runs through July.
To enter the winter contest, mixologists were encouraged to create a cocktail or mocktail that highlighted the winter experience at Canyons Village. The rules? They must use two or more local ingredients, purveyors within a 100-mile radius of Canyons.
“There is no maximum amount of ingredients used in each drink. We want this contest to encourage our bartenders and mixologists to get as creative as they’d like and showcase local purveyors, unique methodologies and creative cocktail ideas,” said Whitney Ryan, Canyons Village Management Association’s director of marketing and public relations.
For its first year, there are six participating restaurants and bars: KITA at Pendry, Kuchu Shabu, Escala Provisions Co. at Hyatt Centric, Red Tail Grill, Edge Steakhouse and The Farm.
With its Japanese-inspired cuisine, Kuchu Shabu’s drink explored Asian ingredients like sake and Thai basil.
Mixologist Austin Dombrosky, who manages the restaurant along with his wife, has been in the libation industry for over a decade.
The Japanese elements of Kuchu Shabu offer new flavor avenues, and Dombrosky found a local sake to incorporate along with Beehive Distilling’s barrel-aged gin in their cocktail, the “Spring Bee.”
“The Tsuki peach sake, they’re a local sake maker … and multigenerational sake makers, so they know what they’re doing,” he said. “With that Beehive barrel-aged gin, it’s more aromatic … so to exhibit a lot of those botanical flavors, the peach sake kind of mellows it out but brings out more nuanced flavors with that sweetness.”
Shaken with muddled Thai basil, the drink nods to the Asian flavors of the restaurant.
“It being muddled actually has more of an anise flavor to it, so it’s like licorice and even fennel a little bit,” he said. “So … that brings it all together and makes it (an) easy drinking, early spring, late winter drink.”
Hence, “Spring Bee.” While they didn’t list the cocktail on the menu, advertising through social media and the management association has brought people asking for it, and the feedback has been positive, Dombrosky said.
While there are just five ingredients in the drink, it packs a flavorful punch with the tartness of the lemon and the sharp basil throughout. The scent and taste of the basil leaf garnish is the cocktail’s primary note, and it also almost entirely hides the peach of the sake. It’s an easy sipping drink — not overwhelmingly powerful and best in small mouthfuls.
Another bee-inspired drink — in case the beehive state connection is lost on anyone — Escala Provisions Co.’s “The Bee Sting” highlights the more obvious tie to bees: honey.
“It’s kind of a play off of the Army and Navy cocktail from the early 1920s. I just infused local ingredients of honey,” restaurant supervisor and mixologist James Monson said.
A 20-plus year resident of Park City whose parents are restaurateurs, Monson said sourcing local is his focus, especially working within the global reach of Hyatt.
“When it was said, ‘use local ingredients,’ I found a lot of passion behind sourcing some of the smaller distributors here within the state of a higher-end, boutique product,” Monson said.
Hollow Tree Honey — which uses wildflowers from the Wasatch Back — is that product, the key to this drink. With a pre-honey drizzle in the coupe glass, honey simple syrup shaken in the drink, finished with another drizzle on top, and garnished with a honey stirrer dipped in honey, it sounds over the top. But paired with the juniper florals of the Beehive Distilling gin, the tart lemon juice and the creamy egg white, also sourced locally, this drink is smooth like, well, honey.
The first sips through the thin foam are extra dynamic perfumed with orange bitters as the final touch. Mixing the drink with the stirrer kept it from separating, and as the drizzled honey dissolved, the subtle floral notes came through stronger.
This simple and sweet cocktail is sitting at second place with 536 votes so far, 40% of the overall, according to the live results published by Canyons Village Management Association.
For Monson, this is in part thanks to his staff.
“More heads are better than one, and this is definitely an example of that. … I work with my bartenders, we talk about what they like, what I like, what we all like, what sells,” he said. “The bar has been really good about talking about our signature cocktail.”
Signs on the bar also explain the drink and the contest, and they have a QR code for guests to cast their votes.
While 536 votes is impressive, the odds of them pulling into first place are slim, with Edge Steakhouse’s “Winter in Park City” sitting at 718 votes, or 53% overall.
Created by mixologist Abhishek Pawar, the “Winter in Park City” cocktail uses Five Wives Vodka and Alpine Distilling’s preserve liqueur as its two local ingredients. From there, Pawar’s experimentation goes wild.
“I always like try to infuse some Indian spices and I always work on that,” he said. He worked in an Indian restaurant in New York City. At Edge Steakhouse, he had to tone those flavors down a touch.
“I decided to get some ginger and honey that anybody can like, so I made that honey and ginger syrup and get some like citrus and some local liquors,” he said.
But the wow factor of the drink is its foam and garnish, Pawar’s specialty.
“I used to make a lot of different flavor foams,” he said, topping the “Winter in Park City” with a ginger beer foam.
The garnish, a leaf-shaped tuile, is bright red for a pop of color.
“It’s a beat tuile. So I made it out of egg whites, sugar, flour and actual beet puree. And I bake that for three minutes,” Pawar said.
With a shortbread flavor, the edible garnish is a fun treat, and the drink itself is ever-evolving thanks to the foam, dusted in dehydrated lemon-orange-lime powder.
The three other drinks in the competition are also unique. KITA’s “Pendry Peaches & Oats,” created by mixologist Jack Schultz, is a rum-based cocktail with an oat-milk foam and garnished with Park City Granola Co.’s Old Town Granola Mix. The “Maple Old Fashioned” is The Farm’s entry, created by Tony Ezelle using High West Bourbon and local maple syrup. Mixologist Chris Devol’s “After Burn” at Red Tail Grill uses an herbal AngeVert along with High West’s Bourbon paired with Luxardo cherry simple syrup.
The last chance to vote for these cocktails is Saturday but they will be available to try by request following the contest. Visit cvma.com/cheers to cast a vote.