From Snow Melt to Foraged Spruce Tips, Taste the Wild in These Canadian Spirits

The left coast of Canada is home to fields of grain that stretch as far as the eye can see and waters that teem with briny life. If something grows here — and almost everything does — you can be sure a local distiller has found a way to get it into your glass.

Black Fox Farm and Distillery

At Black Fox Farm and Distillery outside of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, fifth-generation farmers John Cote and Barb Stefanyshyn-Cote transform a deep love of their terroir into gin and whisky. In the center of the Canadian Prairies, they grow most of the fruit, flowers, and grains they use, including cucumbers for their farm-fresh Cucumber Gin with cracked black pepper and the tangy-sweet native berry that flavors their unique Haskap Gin.

Park Distillery

Keep traveling west to the Rocky Mountains and to Banff, Alberta, the townsite at the heart of Canada’s first (and most iconic) national park. At Park Distillery, a mountain-lodge-like restaurant, lounge, and production facility, spirits like Alpine Gin are made with glacier water and locally foraged spruce tips.

Related: How One Canadian City Became the Epicenter for Cocktail Innovation

Okanagan Spirits

Cross the mountains and dip down into British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, where Douglas firs give way to orchards and vineyards alongside crystal-clear lakes. Tyler Dyck and his family own and operate Okanagan Spirits, the oldest and best-known of several distilleries here. They produce award-winning gins, whiskies, and liqueurs from local fruit and grain, including the fruit-spirit-based Taboo Absinthe. Sample it in cocktails at one of their two popular tasting rooms in Kelowna and Vernon.

Copperpenny Distilling Co.

Follow the highway west to North Vancouver and Copperpenny Distilling, where co-owners Jennifer Kom-Tong and Jan Stenc celebrate a deep love for gin. Their No. 006 Oyster Shell Gin, for instance, has umami notes, a delicate minerality, and briny finish courtesy of Fanny Bay oyster shells from Vancouver Island. Meanwhile, their Vodka 002 is made with 60% B.C. mountain snow melt and wheat grown in the Rocky Mountain Trench.

Sheringham Distillery

Across the Salish Sea, Vancouver Island is home to several spirit producers, including Sheringham Distillery, where founder Jason MacIsaac uses local, sustainably harvested winged kelp to add a seductive salinity to his award-winning Seaside Gin. Sample it in the distillery’s cozy new tasting room in Langford.

Related: These Gins Taste Just Like Canada

Antidote Distilling

Finally, head northwest to Port Alberni, a logging and fishing town at the foot of Mount Arrowsmith, and the last stop before coastal surf mecca Tofino. Nilo Du Plessis, owner of Antidote Distilling, looks to the dense, green rainforests for inspiration and ingredients such as the foraged mushrooms, salal berries, and truffles that go into his earthy, naturally black Antidote Black Gin. Add a splash of tonic to the mix and like black magic, it turns bright violet.

Canada's most innovative distilleries

Every distiller, it seems, is something of a mad scientist. Take Bob Baxter and Al Hansen, the duo behind Two Brewers in Whitehorse, Yukon, who used their skills as engineers to open a brewery in 1997 and again, 12 years later, when they bought a still to make whisky. Since then, each release has been unlike any other; they have an entire single-malt series dedicated to innovation, promising: “You’ve never tasted a whisky quite like these releases.” Little wonder they’ve won Canadian single malt whiskey of the year three times (so far).

An engineering background is also helping distiller Dorian Redden with his Holocene Distilling Project on Vancouver Island, where he and partner Aisling Goodman are building a cutting-edge, carbon-neutral distillery on a shoestring budget. They’ve built every component of their eco-conscious facility by hand so far, transforming a basement moonshine still into a gleaming copper custom energy-conservation system. Their delicious Lost & Found Brandy even features upcycled fruit. Also on the island, Lumette! is the inventive, zero-proof off-shoot of the award-winning Sheringham Distillery; they produce two takes on “alt-gin” as well as the rum-like Lumrum.

And in East Vancouver, Gordon Glanz is a distillery pioneer up for any challenge. Since opening Odd Society Spirits in 2013, he’s created some of Canada’s first craft vermouth and amaro, revived historic recipes, blended a solera-method whisky and even worked across international borders to create a truly local peated malt.

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