Seminar: Sacred Seeds & Story Drinks – How Diaspora Plants Became Bar Culture (and How to Honour Them Without Extraction)

Speaker: 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.