At the 2020 Canadian Whisky Awards that kicked off the Victoria Whisky Festival in January, spirited British Columbia artisan producers from Sheringham Distillery, Dubh Glas Distillery, deVine Wines & Spirits and Shelter Point Distillery sat down for dinner with major players from Diageo (Crown Royal), Beam Suntory (Canadian Club), Pernod-Ricard (Wiser’s, Lot 40, Pike Creek and more) and Forty Creek. All of them came away as medal winners.
Photo credit Charlene Rooke
“Each year a few more of the newer distillers enter, some in serious competition and others just to get an idea of how their whisky compares with others. Some of these distillers have done very well, which I think encourages others to enter,” says Davin de Kergommeaux, founder of the Canadian Whisky Awards. Noting that the presence of small-batch distillers hasn’t changed his team’s judging protocol at all, de Kergommeaux, author of Canadian Whisky: the New Portable Expert and the upcoming Definitive Guide to Canadian Distilleries with co-author Blair Phillips says that new single-grain whisky categories, including single malt, were added this year, and “some small distillers already excel in that area.”
Case in point: Campbell River, B.C.-based Shelter Point won the Award of Excellence for Best All-Rye Whisky for its Single Cask Rye and Saskatchewan’s Last Mountain topped the another new category for its Single Cask 100% Wheat Whisky. In addition, deVine won an Award of Excellence for Best Whisky Spirit (a category recognizing spirits aged for less than the three-year Canadian requirement) for Ancient Grains, a unique mix of khorosan, spelt, emmer and einkorn grains with B.C. barley that’s barrel aged for one to two years. Delta distillery Goodridge&Williams scored a win for the domestic Value Whisky of the Year for its Western Grains bottling.
Ottawa’s North of Seven won Artisanal Distillery of the Year. In addition, multiple medal winners included B.C.’s Odd Society Spirits, Sheringham, Shelter Point, deVine and Dubh Glas plus artisan distilleries like Whitehorse, Yukon’s Two Brewers; Montreal’s Cirka Distilleries; Ontario’s Stalk & Barrel and Maverick Distillery; and Fils de Roy, representing New Brunswick and Quebec.
The influence of craft didn’t stop after the awards. During the Victoria Whisky Festival’s coveted masterclass sessions, Shelter Point’s Scottish distiller, Leon Webb, and operations manager, Jacob Wiebe, led 20 eager tasters through a video and slideshow story of the distillery, plus a flight of the farm-to-bottle whiskies. In another room, double-threat winemaker-distiller Ken Winchester and deVine’s Kevin Titcomb told another packed room about terroir, and how what grows together at the hilltop Saanich property goes into ultra-local vermouth, gin, honey rum, whisky and more.
“The masterclasses are popular with our attendees who are keen to taste the range of flavours on offer as well as discover what is new, while experiencing a behind-the-scenes look at what is coming next,” says Victoria Whisky Festival director and co-organizer Frank Hudson. Case in point: audience members asked Winchester for images of his beloved vintage German still, Brunhilde—the kind of quirky query people don’t ask of a massive industrial distillery.
At the Victoria Whisky Festival’s consumer whisky tasting, Canadian artisan producers from Victoria Distillers and Victoria Caledonian Distillery to Surrey, B.C.’s Central City Distillers were pouring alongside global brands. “It’s like an opportunity to become a fan before these companies become globally-known brands,” says Hudson. “Festival attendees are looking forward to being able to say, ‘I knew them when’” about new distilleries they discover through the Victoria Whisky Festival, Hudson says.