The new rules of tasting rooms

A top 10 list on how to be a great guest on a distillery tour or tasting-room visit

It pays to remember that a distillery isn’t a bar, it’s a working space with a bar, like this one at Wolfhead Distillery in Ontario. Photo courtesy of Wolfhead Distillery

Distillery tasting rooms are hotspots in any city’s drinking scene. Author Janet Gyenes naturally included some in Vancouver Cocktails (new in October from Cider Mill Press; a Toronto edition is forthcoming). Distillery bars are a different breed: “You’re basically in someone’s workshop… Respect the skill and craft that goes into distilling,” Gyenes says. “Let’s face it: most people don’t know if you’re supposed to swirl spirits like you would with wine, if you should sniff or spit or do something else altogether.”

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Yummy umami: Global savoury spirits to try

Look for these savoury spirits on your travels

Inspired by the wild and salty Norfolk coast, Bullard’s Coastal Gin is handcrafted using foraged ingredients like marsh samphire and Douglas fir pine needles. Facebook.com/bullardsgin photo

If you like seaweed-kissed Sheringham Seaside and Isle of Harris gins, try maritime-inspired U.K. bottles like Bullard’s Coastal Gin, Fishers Gin, Da Mhile Organic Seaweed Gin and Mermaid Salt Vodka, as well as North Vancouver’s Copperpenny Gin No. 006 Oyster Shell (a collaboration with Fanny Bay Oysters).

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Funky town

Savoury notes are nudging fruit and flowers over on the craft spirits bar, in favour of umami flavours like mushrooms, seaweed, smoke—and even sheep dung

The rich, earthy, umami notes of mushrooms—like these wild ones foraged near Campbell River—are infusing the spirits world. Getty Images photo

Mushrooms first lit up my brain in 2017, when I tried Candy Cap Magic, a Botanist Bar cocktail that matched the fungi’s maple syrup and spice notes perfectly with rye. Then, in 2019, Sheringham Seaside was named the world’s best contemporary gin on the wings of its sustainable kelp note. After sipping 72 Tomates-kissed Tomato Martinis last summer at hip New York bars, it hit me: the savoury spirits revolution has arrived.

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Distiller for a day

Make your own bespoke gin at artisan distilleries around the world—and right here in B.C.

A selection of custom bottlings at Whistler’s Montis Distilling, where you can create your own gin and bespoke labelling, too. Photos courtesy of Montis Distilling

If you’re planning a trip to London, don’t just settle for a taste of London Dry gin at one of the city’s fine bars. Blend your own during a three-hour Ginstitute Experience at The Distillery on Portobello Road, during which you’ll learn about gin history and production, and go home with a bottle of your own botanical blend, all for £120 (about CAD$175). 

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Earth, wind and fire

B.C. craft baijiu brands bring the ancient Chinese spirit to modern imbibers

The fresh, crisp, slightly floral Deep Earth baijiu is ideal for newcomers to the grain spirit. Photo courtesy of Deep Earth Distillery

It can taste of soy sauce and mushrooms, damp earth or overripe fruit. It’s fermented in earthen or stone pits, and even aged in baskets coated with pigs’ blood. Its styles are categorized by words like “strong,” “sauce” and “medicine” aromas. 

But despite the challenges it might pose for western palates, baijiu (pronounced “by-joo” or “by-joe”) is the new bartender candy. Now two B.C.-made versions of the Chinese spirit—Canada’s only craft baijiu—are helping to bring an ancient spirit to the modern bar.

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Third-wave terroir

“Terroir” spirits define B.C.’s flavours, culture and sense of place

Comparing B.C. craft spirits from a decade ago to today is like comparing 1970s drip coffee to artisanal, fair-trade Chemex pour-overs. While B.C. has a long distilling and even rum-running history, the first wave of local, small-batch distilleries debuted not even 20 years ago. The second wave happened when 2013 B.C. liquor laws defined “craft” spirits as those using 100 per cent B.C. agricultural raw materials.

Now, a third wave of modern distillers is bottling the flavour and culture of the province, defining the future of B.C. spirits. Follow their progress through distillery newsletters and social media feeds.

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A whisky time machine

Whisky in just two weeks? Get a taste of the “synthetically aged spirits” world

To make his synthetically aged whisky, distiller Steve Watts uses staves from Okanagan wine barrels. Photos courtesy of Mainland Whisky

It’s amber in the glass, with aromas of toasted bread, fresh-cut wood, apple and pear. It’s flavours of butterscotch with clove and pepper spice. I’d blind-taste it as a young but promising Canadian whisky from a craft distillery, somewhere on its three-year journey to the glass.

“It’s two weeks old,” says Steve Watts, distiller and founder of South Surrey’s Mainland Whisky, of his Time Machine Hungarian Oak bottling. One of the craft renegades experimenting with accelerated maturation and “synthetic” aged whisky, the Texas-trained distiller says, “There are so many people who are traditionalists in this industry—I don’t need to be a traditionalist.” While his Time Machine spirits can’t be labeled “Canadian whisky,” Watts says, “I see this as a product not to replace barrel-aged whisky, but as something totally different.” (He eventually plans to release traditional wood-matured whiskies, too.)

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Female spirit

Meet some of B.C.’s women distillers, a group so small it begs the question: Why are there still so few?

Shelly Heppner, founder and distiller of Bespoke Spirit House in Parksville. Photo by Dayman-Langen Photography

March 8, 2020, likely passed in a blur for Shelly Heppner. Around International Women’s Day, she was firing up her brand-new stills to produce Virtue Vodka and Jezebel Gin at Bespoke Spirit House in Parksville, which received its distilling green light in February. “Gin is such a vixen! I do want to have a couple of different gins that will have female-oriented names,” says Heppner, who also plans to make small-batch eaux-de-vie from Vancouver Island fruit.

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Collaboration nation

B.C.’s small-batch distillers are getting crafty with their foodie, wine and beer neighbours

Shelter Point Distillery partnered with Vancouver Island Salt Co. to create this barrel-smoked sea salt. Supplied photo

It was about two years ago when my love for Odd Society’s Wallflower Barrel-Aged Gin was uniquely reciprocated: the Ode to Wallflower pale ale mated Powell Street Craft Brewery’s Ode to Citra beer with the distillery’s former gin-aging barrels, created a summer love child of a beer. It was so popular, Odd Society barrel-sharing collaborations with Storm Brewing, Strange Fellows, Coal Harbour Brewing and Steamworks followed. 

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Roll out the barrel

Where B.C. was once a major barrel producer, today distillers are scrambling to find casks

Whisky and barrels at Legend Distilling in Naramata. Jason Lehoux photo

There’s a spot on the Seawall of Vancouver’s northeast False Creek that should be a pilgrimage—or maybe mourning grounds—for B.C. whisky fans. Under the Cambie Bridge in Coopers’ Park, a plaque marks where the Sweeney Cooperage set up shop in 1889, becoming an important international manufacturer of wooden barrels. It closed in 1981, three decades too early for the current demand from B.C. distillers.

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