Recently on one of the rare nights out in my home city, Victoria; Solomon and I hit up Cenote before seeing a movie. Cenote is a fantastic subterranean cocktail bars below the Odeon Cinemas, dimly lit with a rugged almost deliberately pieced together interior; it hosts chess games, large groups of university students splitting massive plates of nachos and discerning cocktail geeks alike. With such a wide array of clientele with individual styles and tastes, comes an eclectic cocktail menu.

Cenote has been around for over seven years and has always been on the outskirts of the cocktail scene in Victoria, always tinkering away at house made bitters and well crafted classics while staying under the radar of the Big 3 (Clive's Classic Lounge, Veneto and Little Jumbo) stalwarts of the scene but recently has begun to really become a powerhouse in itself. A lot of that has to do with Scott Lansdowne and his fellow owners who have created an oasis beneath the streets of Victoria, mixing part café, part university bar, part high end cocktail bar in a way that this writer doesn't understand how it works but is in awe of how it does.

This is the cocktail from my last visit, The Beatrix Slaughter. It has all the things I love in a Hendricks Gin cocktail, continuing by picking off flavor profiles from the gin and amplifying them. Here is what Scott had to say about the drink, "I originally came up with this drink for a pop-up in summer of 2015, but the recipe was simpler, just gin, lemon, raw pepper syrup, and Campari... Sort of a twisted Jasmine cocktail. It had a great bloody colour from the Campari, and the gin started me thinking of a British name... Hence the Beatrix Slaughter. When we updated our cocktail list this spring, I revisited this drink and tweaked it. The Montenegro instead of the Campari gives it a bit more warmth and depth, and the peach bitters provide a nice sweet-tart note. I asked one of our cooks to prep some red pepper syrup, and he sliced up some peppers, added salt, pepper, and oil, and roasted them off. I hadn't thought of roasting and seasoning them before turning them into syrup, but he did so without thinking. The result was fantastic, great savoury depth of flavour, but not as sharp as the raw pepper syrup, so we increased the lemon juice portion by a bit, and voila!"

Victoria has a wide range and eclectic cocktail scene with some of the best bartenders in the country tending some of the most obscure bars I have seen. Cenote is the epitome of how cocktail culture is in the mainstream for Victoria now.

The Beatrix Slaughter

1 1/2 oz Hendricks gin
1/2 oz Montenegro
1/2 oz roasted red pepper syrup
3/4 oz lemon
1 dash Fee Brothers peach bitters.

Glass - Stemmed vintage wine glass

Method - Stir and strain on king cube

Garnish - Mint & cucumber