Winner of the Torres Brandy Zero Challenge Sustainable Bar Canadian Championship and bar manager of the Alibi Room in Downtown Sudbury, Dan Cronin is setting his sights on glory in the upcoming International Championship, set to take place on March 30 in Barcelona, Spain.
Cronin qualified for the international competition a year ago, but the war in Ukraine postponed the event.
The Torres Brandy Zero Challenge invites professional cocktail makers from across the globe to create an 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.
The Sustainable Communities project is aimed at creating a more sustainable relationship between bar programs and the communities they serve. Through a multi-pronged approach, the project seeks to educate consumers about the local land and its products, as well as support the community's most vulnerable members through providing income and life skills.
Cronin’s 2022 submission, the Backyard 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 told Sudbury.com last year. “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 involves 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 flavours of our local land and have our drink program reflect the actual land on which it is being grown,” Cronin told Sudbury.com last year.
In the lead up to the original competition, Cronin told Sudbury.com the concept includes hiring 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.”
The program will incorporate recycling and composting, urban farming, and foraging with the help of local experts. Found ingredients will inspire a rotating cocktail menu, while vulnerable community members will receive a cash honorarium and leave with valuable knowledge to support themselves.
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 Cronin explained in a release from the Alibi Room, "A bar's role is more than just serving drinks. A good bar should look out for the community it serves and educate its consumers. The Sustainable Communities project will allow bars to do exactly that: help care for those who need it most while educating its wider consumer base on the land upon which they live."
Alibi Room owner Kyle Marcus said of Cronin, "From our community to our customers to our team, we could not be any more proud of Dan. He works hard every day to make sure The Alibi Room is socially, environmentally, and economically responsible,” said Marcus. “He has proven himself to be an incredible team leader in-house, and we just cannot wait to see what kind of impact he will bring on an international scale. We are all cheering, Go Dan Go!"
With a focus on the natural world around us, Dan's inspiration for the project stems from a belief that using the assets of a community can strengthen its weaknesses. "This project gives me hope – hope that bars can serve their communities in the long run by becoming more involved in the long-term success of those communities," said Cronin.
You can find more information about the Alibi Room here.
