Civil Pours

Civil Pours is a local Toronto shop creating Made In Canada premium cocktail mixes without the use of artificial ingredients.

They carry a range of flavours from ‘Blackberry & Basil’, ‘Espresso Martini’, ‘Jalapeño Margarita’, and more.

Scroll down to learn more about Civil Pours and how they got started in their business.

Civil Pours Premium Cocktail Mixes

What inspired you to start your business?

Civil Pours was founded by a group of cocktail experts and enthusiasts with a shared goal of transforming the world of cocktails. The founders discovered and invented revolutionary cocktail production technology and techniques to produce the most vibrant premixed cocktails in the world, leveraging local ingredients and sustainable methods.

How would you describe your business?

Civil Pours is a local, craft Ontario cocktail distillery based out of Leslieville, Toronto. We specialize in cocktails and cocktail ingredients, as opposed to producing base spirits like gin or whisky, and are one of the only distilleries in the world (and the only distillery in Canada) using vacuum distillation. Unlike traditional distilleries, which use heat to boil and distill their products, we instead lower the air pressure in our stills to near the vacuum of space. This lowers the boiling point and allows us to distill our ingredients at room temperature, preserving the real flavours of our fresh ingredients and allowing us to eschew any artificial flavours. In traditional distilling, these fresh ingredients are cooked by the heat, which prevents the use of real ingredients throughout the production process. Sustainability is also core to what we do, as we operate in a 100% electric facility and practice closed loop distilling, upcycling fresh produce that the food industry is unable to use, so that we can divert and eliminate waste from landfills.

What’s your bestselling product?

The Civil Pours Espresso Martini.

Why do you think it’s so popular?

The Espresso Martini is an incredibly popular cocktail at bars and restaurants. Our unique processes and proprietary technology allow us to create bottled and kegged cocktails that taste exactly like their bar-made equivalents. As a result, you can enjoy our Espresso Martini and have the experience of a cocktail as nuanced, robust, and velvety as one made for you by a trained bartender. The base is vodka, and to that we add locally roasted coffee, plus real distilled chocolate, coconut, and orange to round out the flavours! A quick dry shake without ice will activate our proprietary foaming agent, creating a rich, frothy foam that will last for up to an hour – just like a handmade Espresso Martini at a bar or restaurant!

What’s your personal favourite product from your shop?

The Civil Pours Whisky Sour! It is available right now at the LCBO until at least Spring 2026 and it showcases everything our technology and processes can do.

The base is an excellent Canadian whisky, and then to that we add real distilled lemon, simple syrup, in-house charred cedar bitters, and a vegetally-derived foaming agent. Most interestingly, we also have a bit of in-house amaretto in the cocktail, which we make with the upcycled pits of avocados, sourced from Mexican restaurants in the GTA!

What’s your favourite local Toronto business?

Reid’s Distillery! They’re our next door neighbours and make excellent gin, some of which we leverage in our own cocktails, like our Blackberry and Basil Gin Smash!