The Best of Alberta

We are in a unique spot here at Culinaire; we are never short of good things to say about Alberta’s locally made craft wines, beers, and spirits (along with a few things that don’t quite fit neatly into those other categories), but we also run the Alberta Beverage Awards – a beverage competition we’ve been running for 12 years now – and so, year after year at Alberta’s largest beverage competition we are seeing all these products right up close, and – importantly here – we are in a position to make some claims about the quality of those beverages, and actually put out a list that we are calling “The Best of Alberta.”

Every July, in Calgary, we run the ABAs with some of the best palates in the province. We use independent judges who are not agents or importers, or otherwise representatives of producers, distributors, or have a financial interest in these products, they are beverage educators, sommeliers, journalists, and buyers for restaurants and retail operations. Everything is tasted blind, which means that every sample is presented to the judges free from influence of price, label, producer, and origin. We don’t even let the judges see or touch the bottles or cans. It’s entirely about the liquid in the glass.

The results are published in the October issue of Culinaire, but since we are naturally proud of the overall quality of drinks Alberta is producing, we felt it was high time – if not past time – to put together a list of the very best, of those bottles and cans made in Alberta all in one place, to showcase and celebrate these remarkable products.

All the products on these pages are either Best in Class in their category, or a Judges Selection at the 2024 Alberta Beverage Awards, but more importantly, here we’ve identified all these products by score. It’s rather new for us to publish the scores, but scores out of 100 seem to resonate with consumers of fine beverages, and also seem to work for the people making these drinks, and wanting to share their achievements with their clientele and distribution partners.