What to drink in Canada

'The bloody Caesar's creation is well documented and sadly lacking in romance.' Illustration / Rod Emmerson

In Vancouver, Winston Aldworth experiences a Canadian tipple that's so wrong it needs a hangover to be right

"I know," said someone once, "let's take a widely appreciated cocktail and stick a pile of puréed shellfish in it."

A cocktail mixed with seafood? Generally, you'd expect such deviance from boozed-up students surveying the wreckage of a flat-warming party at 4am and wondering how to get the best out of the fridge's few remaining ingredients. But, no, here we are in a respectable bar in Vancouver drinking the drink that some Canadians have campaigned to have made the official drink of Canada.

Meet the bloody Caesar — basically a bloody Mary with added clam brine. The two I tried seemed to be spicier than the average bloody Mary, too. But for all I knew the barmen thought they had a point to prove.

The other unusual thing about the bloody Caesars I tried was that they remained unfinished. This is rare for a drink that's graced my hand, but these puppies are hard work.

"It's more of a morning-after thing. Or an afternoon thing," says a woman at the bar.

It being neither morning or afternoon, she's sensibly drinking wine. Her friend is tucking into one of the excellent craft beers that the drinking traveller will encounter along the Pacific north-west coastline.

"Personally, I wouldn't really drink what you're drinking," he said.

"Personally, I think I'd rather be drinking your beer," I said.

But, dear reader, for you I persisted with the bloody Caesar. I can report that the vodka is deep and buried beneath the — wait for it — clamato juice and that the Worcestershire sauce kicks in as it ought to. Happily, it's not as clammy as you'd think; the clam brine brings a salty sway but is lost — as are most things — beneath the surging tides of spiciness.

One of mine had a pickled pepper popped in it, proud as a bosun's mate. The second I tried contained a pair of pickled beans. Such nursery-rhyme playfulness is forgotten when the salty spice blasts the front of your face — you'll taste this seadog from just below your eyes all the way down to the tip of your chin.

Like its cousin Mary, there's something about Caesar that would make it well suited to the morning after.

The bloody Caesar's creation is well documented and sadly lacking in romance. A barman at a hotel in Alberta came up with it in 1969 to celebrate the opening of his hotel's new restaurant.

(Come on Canada, this drink is little enough known outside of your borders for you to come up with a better creation story for it. Something involving hungover woodsmen fighting over the last tin of clams, perhaps?)

Canadians seem happy enough with it. Some estimates say about 450 million Caesars are consumed annually in Canada and, in Calgary, on May 13, 2009, they celebrated Caesar Day.

Happily, any day is a good day to order the same beer that the other guy at the bar was having.

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Getting there: Air New Zealand flies direct from Auckland to Vancouver.