Bitters but sweet

UVA’S MISSION: INTRODUCING VANCOUVER TO ITALIAN WINES, APERITIVOS AND DIGESTIVOS

Lauren Mote has long served as an ambassador for bitter yet delightful flavours. Along with partner Jonathan Chovancek, she’s co-owner of Bittered Sling Extracts, a small firm whose vibrant, made-in-British Columbia cocktail bitters have been steadily making inroads with Canadian and U.S. bartenders.

Despite the demands of that business, Mote has also found time to sling bitters behind the bar. She took over as bar manager at Uva Wine Bar in downtown Vancouver last fall. “The thing that was missing was a place to go and have Lauren Mote cocktails,” she says. She immediately got to work putting her own tart personal stamp on Uva’s ever-shifting list. “The first day I got there I tore up the cocktail list and threw away the book.”

The sister establishment of Cibo Trattoria, which shares the same kitchen, Uva is an Italian-style enoteca, where Mote says “you don’t have to order food or feel obligated to do so.” Wine director Steve Edwards has put together a list that is split roughly 80-20 between Italian and B.C. wines — and no others.

Uva’s mission is to introduce Canadians to the diversity and deliciousness of Italian table wines, but Mote also gushes over the aperitivos and digestivos that Italians drink before and after a meal. These can be intense and challenging, yet Mote plans to make Uva Canada’s premier destination for acquiring an appreciation of their often bitter flavours. Already, she says, “Without a doubt I have the biggest collection of amaros, vermouths and fernets in Canada.”

CHARENTES-CHANSON

Summing up Uva Wine Bar’s approachto drinks in a single glass, this bittersweet bracer of ac ocktail contains anItalian vermouth (which is, after all, a kind of wine), aB.C. craft distiller’s eau-de-vie and bar manager Lauren Mote’s own brand of bitters. • 1 1/2 oz Pierre Ferrand 1840 Cognac • 3/4 oz Cocchi Vermouth di Torino • 1/4 oz Okanagan Spirits framboise

eau-de-vie • 1/4 oz white crème de cacao • 2 dashes Bittered Sling Malagasy

Chocolate Bitters Method: Stir all ingredients with dry cubes in a mixing glass. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, spray the oils of an orange peel over the top of the drink, garnish with the peel in the glass.