Eau Claire Distillery in Turner Valley has taken a gold medal for its amber malt.
It's new spirit, Rupert’s Exceptional Canadian Whisky, was awarded gold in the Canadian Whisky category at the San Francisco Spirits Competition.
“The Canadian Prairies are home to some of the best barley in the world, it’s only natural that we turn that agricultural gold into a gold win,” said distillery founder David Farran in a press release.
“Receiving this esteemed award from the biggest international spirits competition in the United States, is a true testament to Eau Claire Distillery’s expression of the Alberta terroir."
Farran later added in an interview the award was vindication for the distillery's efforts.
“It’s big for us. This is the culmination of so many things,” he said.
“With all the investment you’ve put into the product and your team, it’s somebody from the outside with a lot of expertise and a lot of influence saying ‘Yeah, it really is great.’”
First released by Eau Claire in September 2020, the win for Rupert’s comes on the heels of other accolades, including medals at the 2021 World Whisky Awards, 2021 Canadian Artisan Spirit Competition, and the 2021 Canadian Whisky Awards.
“It really carries a lot of weight for a new product,” Farran added. “It’s kind of like winning the Kentucky Derby or the Olympics.”
For Caitlin Quinn, Eau Claire’s master distiller, the award is encouraging as the distillery continues to develop its profile as a whisky producer.
“It’s nice that we’re getting recognition, and that Canadian whisky is getting recognition,” she said. “I find often, for obvious reasons, Scottish whisky, Japanese whisky, and bourbons from America always get lots of notoriety, whereas Canadian whiskies kind of are forgotten about.”
Initially offering primarily craft gin and vodka since its founding in 2013, Eau Claire’s whisky lineage began in December 2017 with its debut of the first-ever single-malt whisky produced in Alberta.
Four years on, Quinn said she has been excited to see a distinct character evolve in their whisky, and Rupert’s is the latest manifestation of that evolution.
Harnessing the “Alberta terroir” has been an application of craft and science for Quinn, who was born in Winnipeg, raised in Scotland, and holds a degree in chemistry and masters in brewing and distilling.
“What I find with our spirit compared to other Canadian whiskies is the grain gives an apple flavour,” she said. “And you can really taste the maltiness of the grain throughout the whole process, right until the whisky.”
The roller-coaster climate often lamented in the Foothills also adds something special.
“The barley has its own terroir, but also the climate, where we’re getting super highs and super lows,” Quinn said.
“It allows the spirit to expand and contract in the barrels, which forces maturation.”
Whisky, unlike wine, only ages in the wooden cask by continuously circulating through the wood grain over years, refining the spirit and pulling flavour compounds out of the wood.
The more it circulates through the wood, the more refined it gets, and Quinn estimates the effect amounts to added years worth of maturation compared to international whiskies typically produced in more stable and moderate climates.
To this point the distillery’s whisky offerings were single-malt, meaning they came from a single batch, Quinn said Rupert’s is its version of a blended whisky.
A term typically more commonly applied with Scotch, blended whisky is a combination of multiple malts, rather than one single batch.
Such whiskies account for 80 per cent of sales in Scotland, and a more approachable price point, Quinn pointed out.
“Coming into it, we always wanted to be a whisky distillery,” she said. “When I started, we didn’t have any whisky; nothing was three years old yet.”
Much like in Scotland, Canadian law dictates any spirit calling itself whisky “shall be aged in small wood for not less than three years.”
Charting the distillery’s course in whisky territory is a creative and gratifying adventure for Quinn.
“It’s exciting, it’s nerve-racking,” she said. “The only way up is more releases, different types of whisky.
“I can start to get super creative working on different cask finishes and different types of casks to play around with. We’re at an exciting point in the craft distilling industry here in Alberta.
“I’m excited to see the category getting some recognition, and distilleries coming up with their expressions of what the Alberta terroir really means.”
