Students in the Artisan Distilling program tried to keep their ‘gin up’ during the first Spirits Awards at the Canadian Food & Wine Institute on November 22.
During their Introduction to Sensory Analysis class, taught by Artisan Distilling professor Andrea Fujarczuk, the students participated in a blind tasting of gins made by large and craft distilleries from all over the world.
Flight of gins entered into the Spirits Awards.
The event and the judging was completely student driven. They were asked to divide gins into five different categories and nominate an appropriate gin they felt would show strong during the process. The gins were then aligned to flights for a blind tasting and students put forward their favourite. The five categories contained four gins each. Gin categories included London dry, contemporary, Ontario, signature botanical, and flavoured.
Artisan Distilling student Jeff Jocham said activities such as this add value to his program experience.
“The program is a unique opportunity for us to explore and understand the different aspects that make up the whole process of distilling, rather than learning by trial and error if we had jumped right into industry,” said Jocham.
Fujarczuk, who is well versed in the art of gin making, noted that unlike the wine industry, which has multiple awards within Ontario and Canada, there is only one spirits awards in Canada – the Canadian Artisan Spirit Competition (CASC), which only includes two awards for gin. Spirits are dramatically behind within Canada in developing awards, and giving recognition to both local and international producers.
Artisan Distilling students doing a blind tasting of gins.
“By participating in this unique competition, the students will develop essential skills which will enable them to critically evaluate spirits and discover the value of comparing similar products,” said Fujarczuk. “This will equip them to become better distillers and help them to push the limits in the young industry.”
For students such as Aislin Henrickson, this event was yet another valuable lesson the program has taught her in shaping her future career as a distiller.
“I’ve learned way more than I was expecting to about the little details and science behind distilling that I never would have realized existed if I had gone straight to opening my own distillery,” said Henrickson.
The winners for each category were:
- London Dry Gin: Berry Bros. & Rudd, No. 3 London Dry Gin;
- Contemporary Gin: Aviation Gin;
- Ontario Gin: Dillon’s Distillers, Dry Gin 7;
- Signature Botanical Gin: Glendalough Distillery, Wild Botanical Gin; and
- Flavoured Gin: Northern Landings Distillery, Cranberry GinBerry.
