B.C.’S WHISKY INDUSTRY HAS DELICIOUS FUTURE
With no rules or hidebound traditions, creativity abounds
Honey. Vanilla. Plum. Caramel. Flowers. Spice. And is that just the slightest whiff of smoke?
Finally we’re getting a taste of the whiskies B.C.’s artisan distillers can produce and all signs suggest it’s going to be a delicious future. But we’re still years away from knowing just what, exactly, that future holds.
“In the whisky-making world, it’s such an exciting time because there’s such a massive renaissance in creating really exciting profiles,” says Tyler Dyck, CEO of Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillers and president of the Craft Distillers Guild of B.C. “With the renaissance of whisky worldwide, even the big guys are going for small-batch styles and the romance of craft distilling. There’s a huge market for whisky, especially for these ones with regional differences.”
In Canada, unlike Scotland and the United States, there are few rules around whisky. Basically, the only real rule is that it has to be made from grain and aged a minimum of three years in a barrel. And while distillers can play with different kinds of wood, grain, equipment and technique, there’s little they can do to speed up time.
Okanagan Spirits, which opened in 2004, is the oldest craft distillery in the province, and it only released its first whisky, the Laird of Fintry single malt, in 2013. (A single malt is whisky made from malted barley by a single distillery.)
A handful of others — notably Pemberton Distillery and Shelter Point on Vancouver Island — have also released single malts, as has Central City Brewers + Distillers, which is not technically a “craft” distiller, but an artisanal one. Still others have released unaged whisky, known as “white dog” or barley spirits.
But pretty much all of them have some sort of whisky — rye, corn, malt, blended — in the barrel.
“Okanagan Spirits, because we’ve been around the longest, we’ve been able to play with whisky a little longer,” Dyck says. “A lot of these new guys who just got going in 2013 and 2014 have started with gin and vodka, but are going for the Holy Grail, whisky.”
In March 2013, the provincial government established its craft designation for distilleries.
Unlike commercial distilleries, which can produce any amount of spirit from any base material from anywhere, craft distilleries must produce no more than 50,000 litres of spirit per year, and they must ferment and distil it on site from 100 per cent B.C. agricultural products.
Oh — and craft distillers don’t have to bear the 163 per cent markup commercial spirits do, which has made the industry a whole lot more appealing. As a result, the artisan movement grew from seven distillers in 2013 to the more than 50 anticipated by 2018.
Because the industry is so new in B.C., there are no rules or hidebound
traditions, which means there’s plenty of opportunity to try new things.
“In terms of whisky, it’s really exciting,” Dyck says. “You’ve got a lot of experimentation going on. There’s a lot of play in the industry. It’s a real learning curve.”
For instance, Tyler Schramm at Pemberton Distilling is experimenting with his own malting and smoking grains. At Odd Society, Gordon Glanz has aged a tiny amount of whisky in maple syrup barrels. Okanagan Spirits is giving peat from B.C.’s Monashee
Mountains a try. Central City has stocked its barrel room with dozens of barrels that previously held Sauternes, sherry, port and other wines, to see which will provide the best finish.
Most are also trying to define the flavours of a distinctly regional terroir.
At Okanagan Spirits, for instance, Dyck has discovered that 10 per cent of each barrel is lost to the “angel’s share” compared with only three per cent in Scotland, which means the whisky ages quite differently. And that’s fine with him. “Our whiskies should grow up like the rest of us do in the Okanagan,” he says, “so we can present a taste of the Okanagan.”
It’ll take another year, or five, or 10, before we know what B.C. whisky will truly taste like. Seems like there’s going to be plenty of delicious sampling ahead.