Creating a Cultural Connection Through Story

Every Sofitel around the world is culturally linked with a city or region in France that shares similar attributes in terms of culture, landscape and design.

Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour’s cultural link is with Marseille, the epitome of vibrant waterside sophistication.

This link is played out across the property in our greeting to guest, design touches, fittings and fixtures, and artwork selection. It is also evident in the southern French cuisine served in Atelier, and in the creation of signature cocktails and a corresponding storyline in Champagne Bar.

Our signature cocktail is known as the Mistress of Marseille. Combining the flavours of Provence and Sydney, guests are invited to discover the flavours of Marseille through the combination of Archie Rose Signature dry gin, Pampelle ruby l’apero, St. Germain elderflower, herbs de Provence, Pernod pastis de Marseille, G.E Massenez lavender.

Following on the success of the Mistress our teams began to look for new ways to enhance that cultural connection and as such entered into an agreement with local rum distillery Brix Distillers to create our own bespoke Rum that also reflected the flavours of the Marseille area. And hence, we created the Marseille Inspired Spiced Rum with notes of caraway seed, rosemary, marjoram and clove all used in cuisine from the South of France, lavender prolific in the hills of Marseille, vanilla bean, and grapefruit zest, grapefruit is well known on the Corsica coast.

From this point, it was a  natural progression to take the story telling a step further with the creation of our new signature cocktail Dantes Escape. Playing on the story of Dante, this new cocktail sits alongside Champagne Bars longstanding and bestselling signature cocktail – The Mistress of Marseille, completing the story of the ill-fated pair.

In 1844 Edmond Dantès escaped Chateau d’If, a fortress off the of coast of Marseille where he had been imprisoned for 6 years.  He escaped in the night in hope of finding treasure he was told of whilst imprisoned, and to reunite with his former fiancée Mercedès, The Mistress of Marseille. He is rescued by a rum smuggling ship who thought him to be a shipwreck victim. Our escapee finally reaches Marseille, learns of his father’s death, that the story of the treasure is untrue and also of The Mistress of Marseilles marriage to a rival suitor…