2026 Seminars

The seminars that are taking place at TOCC 2026! We will continue updating this page as they get confirmed.

The Flavour Toolbox: Sommelier Sensory Skills for Bartenders presented by Renée Sferrazza

Behind every great cocktail is a trained palate. While bartenders develop strong instincts through repetition and technique, sommeliers often train their senses in a more structured way — learning to identify aroma, texture, acidity, bitterness, sweetness, and balance through intentional tasting exercises.

This seminar introduces bartenders and beverage professionals to sommelier palate-training techniques that can strengthen sensory awareness behind the bar. By exploring aroma recognition, flavour mapping, and texture perception, participants will gain tools to taste more intentionally and describe drinks with greater clarity and confidence.

Through guided sensory exercises and tasting examples, this session focuses on developing awareness rather than memorization — helping professionals trust their palate, communicate flavour more effectively, and refine cocktail balance through sensory understanding.

Whether working with wine, spirits, or cocktails, a trained palate is one of the most valuable tools in hospitality.

Sacred Seeds & Story Drinks – How Diaspora Plants Became Bar Culture (and How to Honour Them Without Extraction) presented by Keyatta Mincey

Before cocktails had names, enslaved Africans carried seeds—sometimes physically, always culturally. These plants became food, medicine, ritual, and resistance across the Caribbean, the American South, and global cities like Toronto. This seminar explores ingredients such as hibiscus (sorrel), kola nut, okra, rice, and cowpeas as living archives of memory and survival, and traces how they continue to shape modern flavour systems behind the bar.

But this is not just a history talk. This session translates cultural knowledge into modern bar practice, offering bartenders tools to engage with globally rooted ingredients through context, care, and respect. Together, we’ll examine how storytelling can deepen guest experience without commodifying culture, and how “story drinks” can honour lineage while remaining commercially viable.

Burnt to a crisp: dealing with burnout in THIS economy presented by Ren Navarro

In front-facing spaces, we’re taught that the show must go on, no matter what. We’ve all become experts at managing everyone else’s experience while our own “battery low” notification has been flashing non-stop. With over 20 years in corporate management and over a dozen years in the beer world, Ren Navarro has been there; she’s lived the gap between high-level professional performance and total personal burnout.

This session skips the surface-level advice about “just taking a break” to look at why we feel so much pressure to never admit we’re struggling. Ren gets real about “toxic resilience”—the kind that treats overwork like a badge of honour—and why traditional self-care feels like an impossibility when you’re just trying to keep up with the cost of living.

Personalizing the Classics presented by Emma Janzen and Toby Maloney

For the first few decades of the cocktail revival, the techniques and histories of classic cocktails mattered greatly as bartenders everywhere figured out how to do this whole “mixology” thing, but today’s zeitgeist lies in the subtle art and craft of personalization. For the launch of their new book, The Classic Cocktail Sessions (out June 2026), Toby Maloney and Emma Janzen pull back the curtains on how to approach personalizing classic cocktail recipes with restraint and aplomb. As they explore concepts like seasonality, comfort and curiosity, aroma, and modern trends like stacking ingredients and adjusting ratios and serves, this presentation will offer inspiration by the pound for at-home mixers, new bartenders, and jaded professionals looking to challenge existing habits and expand their horizons.

You VS the Global Bar Industry presented by Danil Nevsky

We have all grand ambitions of global travel, expensive hotels, work with big brands & awards. As bartenders have you ever asked the question – How is that person or bar doing all that? – there is no actual secret to success BUT there are techniques & strategies that can be utilised to get there. From concept to plan in 1 hour. This is where you’ll find the answers.

SPIRIT-SPONSORED SEMINARS

From Soil to Service: Built Better. Poured better presented by Ramsbury Gin with Mikul Kalyan

Sustainability is one of the most talked about concepts in today’s spirits industry. But beyond certifications and marketing claims, what does it actually look like in practice, and what happens when brands and bars share that responsibility?

This interactive seminar explores sustainability from production to bar service. Using Ramsbury Distillery as a case study, we examine operational sustainability at its core, including estate grown grain, closed loop farming, by-product reuse and full supply chain transparency. Rather than focusing on sustainability as a brand narrative, the session highlights the structural decisions and long term systems that genuinely reduce impact and ultimately shape flavour in the glass.

The second half shifts to the bar perspective through a live panel featuring Alex Skärlén and Ola Carlson of renowned cocktail bar Lucy’s Flower Shop, recognised in World’s 50 Best Bars 2022, alongside a leading voice from the Toronto cocktail scene. Together, they will offer both local and international perspectives on how sustainability is implemented in daily bar operations.

The discussion will be accompanied by serves from the two most recent winners of the Ramsbury Martini Masters, Nick Incretolli of Library Bar, 2024, and Tina Huang of Gift Shop and Mother, 2025. Both were judged on sustainability as part of their winning entries and will present cocktails that reflect responsible sourcing, waste conscious techniques and commercially viable thinking in practice.

Together, brand, bar owners and bartenders explore how sustainability moves from soil to service while balancing creativity, margins, guest expectations and operational realities.

Blending tasting, discussion and audience engagement, this seminar positions sustainability as part of the craft itself, a shared responsibility between distillery and bar that is ultimately reflected in the quality of the final serve.