Alberta Distilleries Get Crafty BY DAVID NUTTALL
From left to right: Last Best Brewing and Distilling, Lone Pine Distilling Inc., Two Rivers Distillery
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f you have spent any time in a liquor store or bar in Alberta in the past couple of years, you should have noticed a whole array of new local spirits available. Much like the craft brewing scene, the artisanal distilling landscape is changing too. While not growing at quite the same rate as the breweries have been, there are now a significant number of new craft distilleries, all less than a decade old, located throughout the province. To be honest, Alberta has never been a bastion of distilling in its almost 120 years, due to several factors. It started with a small population that grew as World War I began, followed by provincial prohibition (1916-23), the Great Depression through the 1930s, World War II, and a ruling Social Credit government (1935-71) who cared very little for the promotion of alcohol during their reign. So it fell to the major distilleries of Ontario and Quebec to keep Albertans supplied with all the liquor they needed that wasn’t coming out of illegal stills somewhere out there on the back forty. While Alberta had supported numerous breweries since the 1890s, it wasn’t
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until 1946 that Alberta Distillers (ADL) opened in Calgary. It took almost another 30 years before Palliser (now Black Velvet) Distillery was established in Lethbridge in 1973, and Sunnyvale (now Highwood) Distillers opened the following year in High River. While ADL and Black Velvet are now part of multinational conglomerates, Highwood continues to be privately owned. Four more decades passed before Alberta saw its first craft distilleries, made possible when the provincial government dropped the minimum production requirement in December 2013. Once green lit, numerous breweries and distilleries made applications. While breweries began operating almost immediately, distilleries needed a little more time. Because a distillery produces alcohol at a higher proof than a brewery, they have a few added licensing requirements and different guidelines for construction, fire codes, and safety, which add time and additional costs. First out of the gate was Eau Claire Distillery, opening in a former theatre in Turner Valley in 2014. It began, as do almost all distilleries, with gin and
vodka, but with an effort to use as many local ingredients as possible. As brewers already knew, Alberta is a treasure trove of natural resources for alcohol. World class grains such as barley, rye, oats, wheat, and corn are all around. Botanicals, honey, fruit, and the whatnots needed for spirits are mostly locally grown. Eau Claire also started exploring how terroir affected flavour, and consulted with local farmers directly. Since 2014 over 50 new distilleries have popped up in communities of all sizes. When Strathcona Spirits opened in Edmonton in 2016, they became the city’s first, and therefore the oldest, distillery. They also advertise as being the smallest producer in North America, operating out of a 740 square-foot facility just south of Whyte Avenue. The advantage of being a small producer is you can make multiple varieties of products; the disadvantage being, of course, is that it is only a small amount of each. However, since today’s consumer seems to demand variety and loves experimentation and shopping local, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Variety was taken to the extreme by Calgary’s Last Best Brewing and Distilling
