I Went Day-Drinking With Dale DeGroff, the Father of Modern Mixology

It wasn’t hard to spot him. On a scorching Wednesday in July, I strolled into Figo, a hotspot in the heart of Toronto’s theatre district. Its sleek, expansive dining room teemed and rumbled with the lunchtime rush crowd, but a quick glance toward the bar was all I needed to find the person I was there to meet. Sprawled comfortably on a bar stool — flanked by the restaurant’s manager and head bartender, both leaning in, listening intently, wholly captivated — was Dale DeGroff.

That name might not mean much to you, but rest assured, the 67-year-old Rhode Island native has almost certainly had a major influence on the way you spend your idle hours. Best known in bartending circles as “King Cocktail,” DeGroff is credited with founding modern mixology culture in the ‘80s and ‘90s, bringing classic recipes, thoughtful experimentation and a gourmet sensibility back behind the bar for the first time in decades. That delicious Sidecar, made with fresh lemon juice and sugar on the rim, you enjoyed last night? That’s all DeGroff’s doing. The Whisky Smashes you guzzled down last weekend? Him, too.

“When I started out in the ‘70s,” DeGroff recalls, “everybody was using artificial mixes and soda guns. Nothing was real. My only goal in this industry was to get back to real recipes and real ingredients.”

He succeeded, and then some. “These guys left me in the dust a long time ago,” he chuckles, gesturing to Figo’s young bartenders. “Marinating their own garnishes, building their own vermouth — it’s gone so far beyond where I expected it to go.”

After a storied career spanning LA’s Hotel Bel-Air and legendary New York spots Aurora, Rainbow Room and Blackbird — picking up a prestigious James Beard Award along the way — DeGroff retired from bartending in the early ‘00s. Today, he serves as the founding president of the Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans, and travels the world educating and inspiring the next generation of bartenders.

That, in fact, is what brought him to Canada in the first place: this summer, DeGroff partnered with Grey Goose as part of its Pour Masters program in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. In each locale, the master lectured 15 of that city’s finest mixologists on the history and significance of the Vodka Martini — that most classic of classic cocktails — before tasting and judging their own interpretations on the iconic drink.

For DeGroff, this latest gig was a match made in heaven in more ways than one. It represented, for one thing, a homecoming of sorts. “About 20 years ago, just as they launched in North America, I worked with Grey Goose on a promotional video where they filmed me using the vodka in my cocktails,” he remembers.

Beyond that long association, however, DeGroff was most thrilled by the high level of competition at Pour Masters. “These guys were phenomenal,” he said. “The deliciousness factor was so high. There were drinks that didn’t win that I would put on a menu tomorrow.

“Programs like Grey Goose Pour Masters are so important,” he continued, “because they open dialogues among bartenders region to region, country to country. It’s a tremendous opportunity to learn from your colleagues. When you’re in that kitchen, watching your competitors set up their ingredients, boy is that a learning experience. You say to yourself, ‘Oh shit, these guys are gonna kick my ass. I gotta up my game!”

And, according to DeGroff, Grey Goose could have chosen no finer theme than the Martini for the program’s latest edition. “This drink has captured the imagination of photographers and painters and artists for decades upon decades, because of its simplicity and elegance,” he said. “The traditional Martini is vodka, some kind of fortified or aromatized wine, and bitters. Iconic. And just look at the design of the glass! That V-shape was debuted at the Art Deco show in Paris in 1922.”

Of course, no encounter with DeGroff would be complete without one of his legendary stories, recounted with actorly flare in his affable baritone. And, thankfully for me, King Cocktail was more than happy to oblige. He launched into a litany of tales about his early days at the Hotel Bel-Air: there was the time he unwittingly asked Vladimir Horowitz not to play the bar’s piano; the time one of his colleagues received the deed to a Los Angeles apartment building as a tip. Along the way, he peppered in references to Robert Frost and Barnaby Conrad and 19th century impressionism.

Just as DeGroff finished his last story, two of Figo’s bartenders conferred about an order before us. “What kind of ice are you using in that cocktail?” one asked the other.

“These are the amazing things happening with bartenders worldwide,” DeGroff said with a smile, reflecting on his legacy. “I mean, ‘What kind of ice are you using?’ Nobody was having these conversations when I started! Ice was ice.”

As taken as he is with the current generation’s passion for invention, though, DeGroff believes people skills and efficiency are still the keys to the job.

“Everybody loves a friendly bartender,” he said, “and they really love a friendly bartender who keeps their goddamn glass full.”