That’s the spirit
Newfoundland Distillery Company uses local grain, seaweed, berries, barley and other ingredients to make it the toast of the town
Peter Wilkins offers a diplomatic answer when asked what’s his favourite drink among the Newfoundland Distillery Company’s selection of spirits. “It’s the one in my glass,” he says with a laugh.
Wilkins and his business partner, Bill Carter, have known each other for years. Carter worked for decades as a chef in Ontario, and was always interested in distilling his own whisky and curious about doing it for a living.
“He really wanted to make a proper whisky, and the aim was to make the sort of pure Newfoundland whisky,” said Wilkins, who is originally from England but has lived with his family in Clarke’s Beach, Conception Bay North, for close to 20 years.
When Carter committed to moving back to the island, the Newfoundland Distillery Company (NDC) was born.
The first attempt at distilling in Clarke’s Beach was made in September 2016. After a few months of experimentation, the first batch of vodka hit stores in May 2017, with gin and seaweed gin available soon after. Last December, the company launched its version of aquavit, a Scandinavian spirit equivalent to an unaged whisky, but made with grain from western Newfoundland. With the provincial government keen on finding new ways for farmers to make use of their crops, NDC turned out to be a good partner.
With a goal to be as local as possible, it made sense to produce a seaweed gin with seaweed from the Grand Banks. Its taste differs considerably from NDC’s other gin, which uses Newfoundland bakeapples.
NDC also uses local juniper berries, savoury, barley and honey. For the aquavit, they use spring water from Springdale, and they smoke peat and juniper bushes on the beach just down the road from the distillery.
Carter’s dream of producing a Newfoundland whisky is getting closer to realization. They’ve sourced the barrels for aging and plan to have whisky available to sell in 2021. An amber rum is also in the works.
“We’ll do an amber rum to start with, but I’d also love to do a navy rum,” Wilkins said. “That’s the proper dark stuff, and brilliant in a hot toddy.”
While NDC is fully interested in expanding product offerings, they don’t want to lose sight of what works for the marketplace. The seaweed gin has thus far proven to be the biggest seller, though sales for the aquavit have also been strong.
“We thought the seaweed gin would be slightly obscure and just for the foodies with adventurous palates and tastes, and it would be a quirky sort of small-batched gin that not that many people would have, but it’s sold quite a bit more than the other gin,” Wilkins said. As of February, NDC was operating with a production capacity of 3,000 litres per month, with plans to expand.
A tasting room on site, which also serves bread, cheese and meats, opened in summer 2017.
“A lot of the locals come by on the weekends,” Wilkins said. “But really, for the tourists in the summer, we hope it will be very busy.”