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“Pierre’s off in the valley getting the first apples of the season,” said Lynne MacKay, offering one of the quaintest, most charming excuses I’ve ever heard.
It was October and I was visiting Ironworks Distillery (see the Travel section for a story about my trip). In 2009, MacKay and partner Pierre Guevremont installed a German-made still in a former blacksmith’s shop in the adorable town of Lunenburg, N.S. It has been turning out some tasty spirits since. And you probably can’t buy any of them where you live.
Everyone’s heard of microbreweries and the idea of a small, family-owned winery needs no explanation. But microdistilleries are a relatively fresh and unfamiliar phenomenon, especially in Canada. The United States and Britain are years ahead of us when it comes to mom-and-pop operations making hard liquor. In recent years, outfits including Tuthilltown Spirits (New York State) and Ransom Spirits (Oregon) have beaten their jumbo-sized rivals in taste competitions and become the talk of bartenders across the U.S. While such artisanal products are hard to come by on this side of the border, Canadians are slowly persuading authorities to allow the production of domestic, craft-made liquor.
Vodka tends to be the first product any distiller makes. It requires no aging, which makes it relatively cheap to produce. And it’s popular. At Ironworks, for example, the vodka is the biggest seller. It’s made from apples, and frankly smells and tastes noticeably like a ripe autumn basket of them — thank you, Pierre, for the careful shopping.
Microdistilleries can offer variety where it is badly needed. Take Ironworks’ low-sugar liqueurs. The raspberry liqueur tastes like real raspberries, whereas a much more common mass-produced product I could mention tastes like excessively sweetened raspberry jam.
Ironworks also makes one of Canada’s very few apple brandies, and one of its very few domestic rums, a clean-tasting amber one. Rum is almost a must if you’re catering to an East Coast crowd. “It wasn’t our intention to do rum. It just kind of happened,” MacKay said.
Ironworks’ products don’t make it far beyond Lunenburg. That’s often the case with microdistilled products, a consequence of our country’s lingering and absurd tolerance for letting bureaucrats decide what we drink. I even looked in vain for Ironworks products in two Halifax liquor stores. So you pretty much have to go to Lunenburg to try them — not that anyone should have to twist your arm to do that.
Also in Atlantic Canada, Prince Edward Distillery is run by a pair of American entrepreneurs who dropped everything and moved to Hermanville, P.E.I., to make potato vodka (plain and blueberry). And should you find yourself in the vicinity of Whitbourne, N.L., visit Rodrigues Winery, which makes Sedna Vodka. It’s only available in Newfoundland and Labrador at present but the company is trying to bring it to market in Quebec and Ontario. Good luck to them.
