The Okanagan Valley of British Columbia is known far and wide as one of Canada’s premiere wine growing regions, second in volume only to the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario.
It is slightly less known that BC Wine Country is also home to a growing number of craft distilleries, which your intrepid liquor reporter recently visited while driving through BC.
The oldest craft distillery in the Okanagan Valley is called Okanagan Spirits, which began production in 2004. Okanagan Spirits was originally on fruit-based liquors called Eaux de Vie.
For the non-Francophones in the audience, these are clear, colorless fruit brandies. They are produced by crushing ripe fruit, fermenting it, and then distilling up to around 40% ABV. Unlike wines or whiskies, Eaux de Vie are generally bottled directly after distillation, without being aged in oak barrels. For this reason, they are generally colorless, and have a very distinctive fruit taste.
After several years of concentrating on fruit-based brandies, Okanagan Spirits branched out into Vodka, Gin, Whisky, and even Absinthe.
Beating out 118 other craft distillers around the world, Okanagan Spirits won 2015 Distillery Of The Year at the World Spririt Awards in Denmark earlier this year, making it the first time a Canadian Single Malt Whisky has won this international competition.
Another old-timer in the Okanagan Valley is Maple Leaf Spirits, who opened their doors way back in 2005. They had been making fruit brandies and a spirit similar to Italian Grappa for many years, but archaic liquor laws forced them into a backwater industrial zone, mostly unseen and unknown to the imbibing public.
In a shocking display of common sense, the BC provincial government did away with a bunch of red tape, finally making it possible for craft distilleries to open tasting rooms and onsite lounges, which has contributed to an explosion of craft distillers all over BC.
In even better news for the tiny craft distillers, spirits produced made from entirely BC-grown fruits or grains are exempt from a whopping 167% government markup that the big distillers must endure.
These long-overdue changes to liquor laws in BC allowed Maple Leaf Spirits to move out of the purgatory of a backroad industrial area to a scenic spot right on the winery tour route, finally opening their business to drive-by traffic.
Just down the road from Maple Leaf Spirits is Legend Distilling, which opened last year in a former doctor’s office in the tiny village of Naramata.
The vodka is fairly standard, but the Legend Distilling Doctor’s Gin is made with locally foraged juniper berries and other flowers and herbs, making for a highly aromatic gin that is perfect for sipping straight or in a cocktail.
For the caffeine lovers, Legend Distilling produces an unholy union of cold brew coffee and small-batch vodka into a 375mL bottling they refer to as Blasted Brew. A coffee-infused vodka is the perfect ingredient for a Black Russian cocktail, or for those hair of the dog mornings after a long night of carousing.
An up-and-coming contender is none other than Urban Distilleries, located in downtown Kelowna. Opening their doors in 2010, they do make fruit-based Eaux de Vie like most other distillers located in wine country, but they are famous for their Urban Single Malt Whisky.
Your humble narrator is unsure if this is simply a marketing gimmick, but the glass bottle containing the whisky includes part of a French Oak barrel stave right in the bottle, which supposedly allows the whiskey to continue improving with age after bottling.
Perhaps the most interesting backstory comes from Old Order Distilling, which opened in Penticton earlier this year, by the son of seventh-generation Mennonite farmers who fled Prussia in the 1790’s to the safety of Canada.
While the grains are still grown on a traditional farm, the distillery and attached cocktail lounge are located in a hip entertainment district in downtown Penticton, where there will be nary a bonnet in sight.
Like most craft distillers, Old Order Distilling started out with vodka and gin, because they do not require long barrel aging. There is also a small-batch whisky patiently aging in oak barrels, which should be ready for bottling and release in 2018.
Your humble narrator has become enamoured with the spirits of BC. Look for them at your local booze merchant to try one for yourself!
