OUR PROCESS
CASK PROGRAM
Our cask program has been designed to be one of the most ambitious in North America. Not content to simply rely on standard ex-bourbon casks, our Master Distiller has developed an exciting and imaginative program for the acquisition of casks that have already been used for the production of other fine and refined spirits. This cask collection includes some rare barrels particularly difficult to find. By using casks that once contained various types of wines, spirits, aperitifs and bitters, we have at our disposal a massive array of flavors to bolster our beautiful whisky's already complex profile..
We only work with the best barrel brokers and cask experts to obtain the highest quality barrels. Every barrel we obtain, goes through an extensive set of quality assurance checks before it enters our facility. Once on site, our Master Distiller does his own set of inspections to make sure every cask meets our rigourous standards.
MALTING PROCESS
We have built our distillery with the idea of controlling every aspect of the spirit-making process which includes malting our own grain. We plan to malt our own barley in order to produce certain exceptional editions that will fully express the great potential of our terroir.
Some people thought we were crazy when we said we wanted to be able to malt our own grain. They might be right, after all, malting grain is a lot of hard work especially if you do it by the old floor-malting method like we do. In fact very few distilleries have attempted to venture down such a bold and labor intensive path, but we feel that it's the best way for us to control every aspect of our production and get the flavors we want.
Floor malting involves very little machinery and is done almost entirely by hand. It takes knowledge and skill and sadly has become somewhat of a dying art. We're trying to change that by growing our own grain and malting it completely on-site for a truly terroir-driven distillery.
Malt is first cleaned and then soaked with our land's own spring water for two to three days in our specially built steep tank. We then drain out the water and cast the wetted malt onto our germination floor where it is hand-turned and raked by our distillers several times a day. After three to four days we transfer the malt into our kiln so that we can dry it with the beautiful aromas of our Canadian peat-fueled smoker. After 24-30 hours of smoking and drying our malt is allowed to rest for a few weeks before we mash it and turn it into our flavorful whisky spirits.
SMOKER
Our malt kiln is fuelled by peat harvested right here in Quebec. This peat provides smokey aromas of sea spray, campfires, and flowers.
We hope to eventually offer you some peated whiskies that will be added to our traditional whiskies.
