Here are 22 inspirations for seasonal spirits to add to your distillery’s mix: see what other artisan distillers make to combat the chill of fall and winter, from spiced spirits to festive cream and fruit liqueurs, holiday gins and the toast of Poland. Keep your local customers coming back for new, limited-edition spirits to fuel their holiday entertaining.
Festive Gins
Consider spicing up a seasonal gin and formulating it into cocktail recipes for the holiday season. Turner Valley, Alberta, distillery Eau Claire Distillery offers a Christmas Gin spiked with iconic frankincense and myrrh spice resins that is calls “almost lemony, balsamic.” It also makes the popular Gin Rummy, a barrel-aged love child of the two spirits with winter-spice flavour evocative of fruitcake; it lends itself to uses in both hot or cold drinks. King’s Lock Craft Distillery’s Winter Gin has anise and cinnamon notes, and is oak aged for a hint of vanilla. The distillery also offers Christmas gift boxes.
Cream Liqueurs
Why would your customer’s buy Bailey’s when you can make a superior, local cream liqueur? A CASC Gold medal winner, Morning Glory Cream Liqueur from Hansen Distillery is just one of the cream liqueurs spiking Albertans’s holiday morning coffee. Big Mountain Creamer from Monashee Spirits in Revelstoke, B.C., includes the caffeine hit: its cream liqueur contains coffee from local roaster Stoke, plus chocolate, caramel, almond, vanilla honey and maple syrup.
Spiced Spirits
Monashee is also known for its Vulcan’s Fire, a fierce shot of festive cinnamon, apple, honey, maple and chili. Also in B.C., De Vine Spirits makes a Black Bear spiced rum, a honey rum flavoured with whole spices like black pepper and star anise. Victoria Distillers Sidney Spiced is aged molasses rum sweetened and spiced with ginger, orange peel, star anise and orris root. Newfoundland Distillery won Best Canadian Spiced Rum at the 2019 World Rum Awards with its Chaga Rum, a five-year Demerara rum it infused with the flavourful fungus harvested in central Newfoundland and sweetened with a touch of honey.
Great Pumpkin
Now that pumpkin spiced everything is a full-blown cultural trend, the season doesn’t end with Halloween. Winnipeg’s Capital K Distillery offers a Tall Grass Pumpkin Spice Rhumb (the unusual spelling due to the unaged molasses-based distillate), and Saskatchewan neighbours LB Distillers markets its Pumpkin Spice Vodka, with a wink, as “next level basic.”
Traditional Tipples
Wayward Distillery on Vancouver Island makes an excellent Krupnik, the honey, herb and warm-spice spirit often served for Wigilia (Christmas Eve dinner) in Poland. Sloe Gin, a UK seasonal staple, gets a B.C. spin with an infusion of fresh spruce tips at De Vine Spirits.
Tastes of the Season
Northern Landings Ginberry cranberry gin from Ontario’s Muskoka region, plus cranberry liqueurs from Dragon Mist Distillery and Okanagan Spirits in B.C., Distillerie Fils Du Roy in New Brunswick, and Barrelling Tide and Ironworks in Nova Scotia, all spotlight the tart, Christmasy berry. Crosscut Distillery in Sudbury and Kinsip House of Fine Spirits in Bloomfield, Ontario, both have evergreen hits on their hands with the spruce-tip vodka Small-batch Season for Trees-In and Woodland’s Whisper Pine Vodka, respectively.