MEET THE MAKER: A REAL TONIC

Caitlin Quinn left the Highlands for the flat lands to take a job at Eau Claire Distillery. She found a refreshingly unstuffy workplace and creative freedom.

Caitlin Quinn left the Highlands for the flat lands to take a job at Eau Claire Distillery. She found a refreshingly unstuffy workplace and creative freedom.

twelve months ago, Caitlin Quinn was happily working on a master’s degree in brewing and distilling at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh without even the slightest glimmer that her future lay over the ocean in small-town Alberta.

Quinn had enrolled in the program—one of the world’s only postgrad booze-making degrees—after completing a degree in chemistry and realizing that the life of a chemist wasn’t for her. But a simple realization steered her in the right direction. “The distilling process is a chemical process; you just use ethanol instead of other chemicals,” she says of the logic behind her career change.

Just as the shift from chemistry to distilling was relatively smooth, so, too, was the move from Scotland to Turner Valley and a post as master distiller at the Eau Claire Distillery. When Eau Claire’s president David Farran petitioned Heriot-Watt for applicants, Quinn leapt at the opportunity. (The paperwork was somewhat simplified by virtue of the fact that, although she grew up in Scotland, she was born in Winnipeg—her father is Canadian, her mother Scottish.) “The main reason I wanted to get into craft is you don’t get a lot of creative freedom at other companies,” Quinn says. “And even if you do, it takes too long for your idea to even make it to market. But here, if I come up with something today, it could be on the shelf tomorrow.”

Beyond Eau Claire’s core products—Three Point Vodka, Parlour Gin, and Prickly Pear Equinox—Quinn has ample room to play. At Christmas, along with the seasonal Gin Rummy (a gin-rum blend with winter spices that makes for a dangerously tasty toddy), Eau Claire released Quinn’s special-edition frankincense-andmyrrh Christmas Gin, which sold out in a matter of weeks. Quinn also whips up smallbatch spirits that are only available in the distillery’s tasting room.

As much as she appreciates the creative freedom, Quinn, 25, says the job at Eau Claire has other advantages. “In Scotland, especially, you’ve always had to start at the bottom and work your way up. By the time you get to the top you are 40 or 45,” she says. “With craft distilleries, though, they’re new businesses and are looking for people with the formal education or fresh eyes.”

Her fresh eyes and her Scottish sensibility are going to come in particularly handy as Eau Claire prepares to release its first batch of whisky (the first single-malt made in Alberta) in late 2017. The barley-based spirit, which will more closely resemble scotch than rye, is already in barrels but needs to age for at least three years in order to meet Canada’s legal definition of whisky.

As she waits for the whisky’s big day to come, Quinn is trying to acclimatize herself to Canadian life (she lives in south Calgary and commutes to Turner Valley). So far, she’s been pleasantly surprised by the rock-star treatment she gets when representing Eau Claire at splashy events. And she’s certainly not missing Scotland’s rainy weather.

“People keep asking me how I’m enjoying Alberta,” she says. “So far, I say I’m just glad it’s been a nice winter.”