With American Booze Out of Favor, Canadian Drinkers Are Going Local
Government-run liquor stores have pulled US drinks from their shelves in response to Trump’s tariffs, triggering greater creativity from bartenders and ordinary tipplers alike.
Illustration: Kyle Platts for Bloomberg Businessweek
Drinks tend toward the tropical at Gareth Tingling’s backyard “speakeasies” on Friday afternoons—a summer tradition he and his neighbors started during the pandemic, when indoor meetings were verboten, thus the Prohibition-inspired name.
In a twist on the cross-border flow of liquor a century ago, when the US banned alcoholic beverages and Canadian distillers helped supply the underground market, the portfolio manager and financial adviser stocks his home bar in Oakville, Ontario, with a stiff coconut rum he brings back from vacations in Florida.