Paul McLean of MCLEANSCOTLAND & ANGELS WHISKY CLUB was chatting to Barry at Canadian distillery Still Waters.
Q; January 2009, after a year of planning, training and education, and dogged persistence, Still Waters Distillery was launched. How did you feel that special day? Excited and nervous. It was like having a new baby – incredible joy and excitement, but nervousness and concern about the future.
Q; was there a reason to select a German pot still rather than say, Scottish or Irish? We were looking for equipment designed specifically for micro-distilling that would be flexible to make a variety of spirits. Customer service and support was also a key factor in selecting the vendor we chose.
Q; you make small batches, just how many bottles do you intend to offer in a year?
We are currently producing about 100 casks of whisky a year, in addition to our vodka, and some other products. It will still be a couple of years before we are at the point of releasing 100 casks a year, and some will be bottled at cask strength while others at 46%abv. Therefore, its hard to predict exactly how many bottles other than to say it is small.
Q; who designed the logo and the bottle shape? We worked with a local branding and marketing company.
Q; are ALL raw products local (I know local in Canada means global for us here in Scotland, you are a huge country!) ? Yes, all our grain is Canadian. Our malted barley is from Alberta and our rye and corn (for our rye and corn whiskies, obviously) are locally grown within 100km of the distillery.
Q; I notice you also offer vodka and other drinks, how much does the whisky form a part of the overall plan? Our passion is whisky and our long term goal has always been primarily whisky. Eventually, we see almost all of our production and sales being whisky.
Q; do you have any plans to actually sell a cask? We are open to the idea, but federal and provincial taxes and markups make the consumer price about 4 times higher than the purchase price, so we’re not sure it will be attractive.
Q; can you ship bottles/cases out to Europe or Russia etc? No, but we are working now on a European distributor.
Q; you offer tours to the distillery, do you also offer evening tastings or similar to groups/clubs? Yes. In fact, most of our tours and tasting occur in evenings and weekends for groups and clubs. We love the group tours and find it is a chance to really educate our consumers as well as learn from them what they are looking for.
Q; any future plans you can tell us? In a year or so we plan on adding more capacity with another still and washbacks. Until then, our focus is all on whisky!
Many thanks Barry, I look forward to that promised sample with glee!
Paul was chatting to Barry Bernstein
STILL WATERS DISTILLERY
150 Bradwick Drive, Unit #26
Concord, ON L4K 4M7
905-482-2081
Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/StillWatersDistillery)
Twitter (http://twitter.com/StillWatersD)
www.mcleanscotland.com
http://angelswhiskyclub.com/awc/stillwaters.asp
