Saturday read

Continued from WP1 Back in the ’80s, Volo was hardly a beer Mecca. Allison McColeman, who started working there before Morana took over, recalls it as “a busy, prosperous restaurant, but very gangster-y. One guy that worked here used to pull the craziest scams on customers to support his heroin habit. Ralph was like a teddy bear that rolled in.”

Volo’s “north downtown” stretch of Yonge Street was colourful, to say the least. Across the road was the infamous rock ‘n’ roll bar The Gasworks. Sometimes clientele spilled over. Morana remembers confronting an intimidating biker who had just gotten out of jail and was smoking up in the ladies’ washroom: “I grabbed him, and I said, ‘Grunge, if you ever f---in’ do this again, you’re never allowed in here.’ And he said, ‘Sorry, Ralph.’ From then on, the bikers were all (polite).”

Morana’s world-weary smirk often resolves into a smile, and his dark eyes sparkle with inspiration. Over the years, he tried a number of things to brighten the place up: live music, art by local artists and poetry readings, the last of which he describes, succinctly as “a disaster.”

The early-’90s recession was tough: “I came close to losing everything. I had lost my house in Ajax, and I had to rent down here.” Morana, a kitchen novice, started cooking, and his Carbonara became a hit. He clawed himself into the black.

But it wasn’t until 2002 that he found a passion that would truly pay off. Just as Ontario’s craft beer renaissance was picking up speed, Morana tried his first Denison’s (now known as Side Launch Wheat), and thought, “Wow, this is pretty cool! I’ve been drinking Keith’s?” He put the uncommonly flavourful tap on at Volo.

New customers started trickling in, asking for the beer. Just like that, the bar became a destination for those dissatisfied with flavour-deficient macro-lagers. Morana began bringing in brews by upstart breweries: Scotch Irish from Fitzroy Harbour, Church Key from Campbellford, Toronto’s own Mill Street. His son Tomas says, “You’ve got to understand one thing about Ralph: when he gets into something, he dives in head-first. It was like, ‘ I’m going to visit every brewery there is. I’m going to every festival. I’m travelling around the world.’”

Over the years, Morana would study home brewing in Chicago, practical brewing in California and cask ale brewing in Sunderland, England. He became an evangelist, and by 2003, following a few brave beer bars such as C’est What, he took all of his big-brewery taps offline. The disgruntled regulars he lost were replaced by a more adventurous clientele.

By 2005, Volo was starting to lead the way. In October, he put 22 Ontario cask ales on the patio – after coaxing brewers to revive an English way of making beer that was all but dormant in the province – and called his festival Cask Days.

Chris Turner, who had just started working at the bar, recalls asking Morana: “‘We’re just going to lay them out on the patio, and you’re going to sell tickets, and people are going to come taste this warm, flat beer?’ They lined up around the corner, and it sold out.” The 12th annual Cask Days will be held at the Evergreen Brick Works in October, with upwards of 430 casks from brewers across Canada and the U.S. 10,000 people are expected to attend.

Erica Graholm, head of the brewing team at Toronto’s Steam Whistle, attended the first festival, on her birthday. The whole bar sang as she was handed a pint glass with imperial stout, cappuccino foam, green maraschino cherries and sparklers. At Volo, she found a sense of community: “They were at the crossroads of the entire brewing scene, and it became a meeting place.” Brewers bounced ideas off of each other, and the drinkers’ enthusiasm helped convince their bosses there was a market for their braver concoctions.

Cask Days gave rise in 2009 to the annual IPA Challenge, a hoppy-beer blind tasting, at a time when Ontario defaulted to “smooth drinking” brews. Many of the popular, unabashedly bitter IPAs on shelves today – including Muskoka’s Mad Tom, Great Lakes’ Karma Citra, and Amsterdam’s Boneshaker – started as oneoffs at Volo. Iain McOustra, brewmaster at Amsterdam, recalls when Boneshaker was an experiment for a company known for its safe blonde and brown beer: “It has turned into our number-one brand. Ralph really talked it up.”

Morana would rebrand his restaurant again, as “Bar Volo,” in 2010, as he continued to preach the gospel of cask ale and challenge brewers to take over his taps. One night in 2011, Toronto’s Great Lakes Brewery put 19 beers on draught at Volo, many of them for the first time. “It was a lot of work, and a little nerve-wracking,” recalls brewmaster Mike Lackey. “I certainly hadn’t done anything like that, and there was a lineup down the block – all these people had come to (taste) what we were trying to do.”

Predictably, Morana didn’t stop there. In 2008, Morana fought a mountain of red tape and started an import company just so he could bring in beers by Montreal’s worldrenowned Dieu-du- Ciel! The brewery had planned to go with a more established competitor, but Luc “Bim” Lafontaine, the head brewer at the time, recalls Morana’s “sublime blend of charisma and dedication” won the day. His company, Keep6 Imports, now represents 16 breweries, in Canada and abroad.

In 2010, Morana put his brewing skills to work on the bar’s own “nano” brewing system, which spawned Volo’s House Ales brand. By that time, Tomas and Julian were learning the family business. Together, they would change Volo’s branding, add techno and hip-hop to the sound mix, and bring in younger drinkers.

Morana quips that when he committed to craft beer, he envisioned “old geezers giving me a hard time, and they’d all go home by 9:00.” But now, he says, “I’ll pop in to see how it is at 9:30–10:00, and it’s a lot of younger people dressed up, and I’m thinking, ‘What’s this place turning into?’ And they’re all drinking beer. It’s not like they just think it’s a cool place to be in. It’s got its own energy right now.”

That energy has peaked during the last days of Volo, as its fans congregate to mourn and celebrate the little spot with its old worldmeets-new world feel, the nonpareil people-watching patio, the ivy covering its south side (which grew from two seeds 20 years ago), the alphabetical tap handles (their rotating beers listed on a chalkboard resembling an airport’s flight board) and the diverse clientele.

Morana recalls hearing three years ago from his landlord that the building’s future was in jeopardy; by March 2016, its sale to a developer was confirmed. The Heritage Impact Assessment found that the building – despite being 110 or so years old – wasn’t worthy of preservation; the Ontario Municipal Board agreed. But the city risks losing what Paul Farrelly, a member of the Toronto Preservation Board, calls “the surprise of Yonge Street. It has a pulse of people making it, and making their way along. Ralph is grounded in where people are at, as opposed to making millions and brand names.”

But the brothers are moving on, with their father’s guidance. “‘Volo’ means ‘to fly,’” Julian notes. Over on College Street he and Tomas hope their venture, Birreria Volo, will take off. “When Ralph started,” says Julian, “craft beer as a whole was such a niche thing. We’ve talked about taking it back to the roots of that niche market and starting from there again.”

Other Volo friends and alumni are starting their own bars, too: Andrew Connell, who bartended there from 2010–13, caught the craft-beer bug from Morana – “After a year working there, there was no turning back” – and has co-founded Bar StillWell in Halifax, which is helping ferment a craft beer explosion out east. Dieu-duCiel!’s Lafontaine will start up his own brewpub, Godspeed, in Toronto’s east end next year, with inspiration from the Moranas. “I raise my glass like I never did to these guys. I cut short a business trip to China and Japan to be there on the very last day. There is no way I’m missing it – and I have this great desire to destroy a brick wall with a sledgehammer before the crane does it.”

Meanwhile, Morana himself has leased a place down the street on Church and Dundonald. He’s looking to reimagine Bar Volo, although certain elements, the brewing included, are up in the air.

Still, if it wasn’t a challenge, it wouldn’t be worth it. “Now I’m going to have some debts again,” he sighs. “But I think I’m too young to quit, so I’ve got to keep on going.”