Ayr’s Willibald distillery creates a buzz
Trio take a leap of faith and enter burgeoning craft distillery industry
AYR — It sounds almost like a scene from “Field of Dreams,” where Ray Kinsella builds a baseball diamond in the middle of a cornfield and crowds just start showing up.
Instead, in this case the three young founders of Willibald Farm Distillery built a rural distillery on the site of a former dairy barn, and people began flocking in.
“People just kept coming and coming. The entire parking lot was full. We had cars on either side of the laneway, and down the road all the way to the corner,” said cofounder Cam Formica, describing last month’s busy opening day. “It was craziness.”
After more than three years of planning, the Willibald Farm Distillery is in the fledgling steps of building a name for itself on the outskirts of Ayr. Based on the hundreds who came to their soft opening, people have begun to notice.
Formica, 28, along with brothers Jordan van der Heyden, 27, and Nolan van der Heyden, 24, have been logging some long hours tweaking recipes, getting their German-made, 1,000-litre hybrid pot still assembled and building their spacious tasting room.
They hope to be listed by the LCBO by the end of the summer, and selling directly to local bars and restaurants after that. For now, if you want a bottle of Willibald’s finest, you need to drive to North Dumfries Township, or should soon be able to order it online through their website.
Their first release is a barrel-aged gin ($44.95 for 750 mL), mellowed in quarter casks of new American oak that give it an amber hue and a hint of caramel and vanilla flavour. They took the gin staples of juniper, coriander and angelica root and infused it with cardamom, grapefruit peel and caraway to add spice and citrus notes.
They’ve got plans for more spirits, too. Last summer, they started aging their first commercial batch of Canadian whisky, which won’t be ready for another two-plus years.
The distillery idea took shape shortly after university, when the three founders were talking about business ideas and initially considered craft brewing. But a love of whisky steered them toward distilling instead.
“We were just brainstorming ideas, and we all had a passion for spirits,” said Jordan van der Heyden. “We realized Ontario is really underserved by small distilleries.”
Unable to find a suitably zoned location in Kitchener or Waterloo, they turned their attention of the van der Heyden’s family farm on Reidsville Road. They’ve already planted their first crop of rye, and hope to eventually grow most of the grain they will eventually be using for their spirits.
“The idea is to grow as much as we can,” said Jordan van der Heyden, adding that they want to get their organic certification, too.
The name? That was easy. Willibald is the middle name of van der Heyden’s grandfather, and it just seemed to stick.
The guys behind Willibald think consumers are looking for more variety at the liquor store — and believe craft distilling will follow the same trend as craft brewing, where buyers have increasingly started choosing local instead of big international
brands.
“People are looking for options outside the main brands. Right now, if you go to the LCBO, it’s just shelf after shelf of one brand,” Jordan said.
If their hunch is correct, they’re getting ahead of the curve on a market that looks set to explode. In the U.S., craft distilling has taken off, and Ontario is beginning to clear hurdles to selling craft booze.
They admit it was a leap of faith to go into debt studying distilling in the U.S., getting licensed in Ontario and buying their German distillery equipment before they’d even sold a single bottle.
“That’s the scariest thing. You place this big order to get all your equipment over from Germany, but you actually have no idea if it’ll work or not,” Formica said.
Because they barrel-age their spirits, it can mean months of waiting before they get to see if a recipe is any good. But the founders are confident they’re making a good product and can grow a following.
They also like that they’re helping to bring distilling back to a region that was once dominated by Seagrams, a global giant in the liquor business, but is now only served by a handful of small distillers. “It’s kind of cool to do something like this in a region that has such a rich distilling history,” Formica said. “People come here and they’re really excited. It’s not like you’re selling carpet. They actually want to come here and try something new, and their excitement makes our jobs more fun.”
Early indications are people like what they’re sipping from Willibald, which is planning a formal grand opening, and monthly on-site food truck events, later this summer.
It’s been a long road for the guys at Willibald to be able to finally share their spirits with the public. They say it’s a thrill to see their bottles leaving their shop in the hands of customers.
“Everything we’ve been working so hard for, it’s all here now. It’s super exciting,” said Nolan van der Heyden, a University of Waterloo engineering grad who does the bulk of the distilling.
“Putting that first label on the bottle was surreal. Because it’s like now all your hard work is going out into other people’s hands.”