Jessica Chester Co-founder of Laneway Distillers, Toronto

Even though Jessica Chester is known amongst friends and family for her love of complex gins, the vodka-based Cosmopolitan was the cocktail that gave her a “lightbulb” moment. It was in Manhattan, as Chester sat at a bar and watched the staff mix up her first proper, legal mixed drink. “I realized that what I was getting was the bartender’s time and skill at balancing flavours,” she says.

Years later, she found herself bonding with neighbour Reagan Soucie, who she met in the laneway behind their houses in west-end Toronto, where she moved after years working in

New York and London. Before long, the dynamic duo went on, in September 2020, to launch Laneway Distillers. Chester, born in England, says she and partnerin-gin Soucie, who hails from Northern Ontario, challenge each other in all the right ways— including dreaming big, which is part of the reason their portfolio is so ambitious: two gins, a vodka and a gin-based liqueur, so far.

“I’ve been called aggressive, something I’ve started to think of as a compliment .... If I’d been a man, I would have been called ‘passionate,’” she says. “I think Ontario has amazing opportunities, but you have to be fearless to make the most of them.”