Gin and life have much in common.
It’s all about balance.
With gin, too much of one botanical can create overwhelming flavour. In life, too much of anything can just be, well, overwhelming.
NC Assistant Distiller Ian Bickle knows this. As a self-professed gin fan who switched careers to make the spirit that captured his imagination and tastebuds, he knows it’s critical to mind the nuances of gin’s flavour drivers to create top notes and base notes, and ultimately something pleasant to drink.
As a former chef, he also knows when it’s time to step away from the burner or risk becoming consumed by a life spent behind it.
“There was very little family time and on my days off, I was just destroyed,” Bickle recalled about chef life.
But distilling life — now combined with teaching life in the Artisan Distilling program — has given him what he was missing in his previous incarnation while still tapping into all that he loved about being in a professional kitchen.
“I knew this was a great thing for me,” Bickle said. “I could still be creative and have family time. That’s what I love about spirits. There’s a set way to make them but it’s not the one and only way. You can do little things and change it completely.”
Kind of like in life.
Behind the burner
Bickle was 14 when he fell in love with the kitchen, working as a dishwasher at a diner in Newmarket where he grew up. Overseeing the dish pit gave him a glimpse of working on the other side of the pass and he liked what he saw.
“I thought it was so cool,” Bickle said. “I thought the guys on the line were so cool and I wanted to be like them.”
So he started to teach himself how to cook. At 16, a tenacious Bickle started his apprenticeship, using his high school co-op term to work toward earning his papers as a Red Seal chef.
“I did everything to not be in school and be in the kitchen,” he said with a laugh.
Cooking — and love — eventually led him to Australia. Bickle spent 10 years there, after meeting his wife, Sarah, while working in Banff before following her home. There, he opened a café, and discovered his affinity for gin in a country making a name for itself working magic with juniper berries.
“Gin’s a really big culture over there,” Bickle said. “There’s lots of micro-distilleries over there.”
And they showed him there’s more to spirits than his father’s whisky. Bickle “loved the botanical side of gin” and all that one could do with it. Still, the kitchen is what sustained him, at least financially by the time he and Sarah moved to Canada in 2018 and Bickle resumed his helm in another galley.
The grind of long hours and little time with family, which now included daughter Bridget, weighed on him, however.
He recalled talking to Sarah about how he wished he could take a weekend course to learn how to make gin. Bickle was at a crossroads and desperately seeking direction on which way to turn.
He never found the weekend course, but he did find Niagara College’s year-long Artisan Distilling program and applied to that.
The stakes were high returning to school to change careers with a young family. Still, it would prove to be for the best. He learned how to make gin and developed an affection for other spirits in the process.
“I always loved gin but then I learned to appreciate all these other spirits like grappa,” Bickle said. “Halfway through the program, I could pick up the idiosyncrasies and I understood why people loved it.”
That was a big change from thinking it was “rocket fuel” when his grandfather drank it. Bickle landed at Tawse Winery after graduating from Artisan Distilling in April 2021, where they make gin among other spirits, in a program started by late winemaker Paul Pender.
That full-time gig straight out of school spoke to his abilities with a still. But so, too, did getting tapped by College Distiller David Dickson for the assistant job, which started in January, and includes helping students produce their capstone project spirits.
Helping at the head of the class
Bickle was a natural fit coming from a culinary background, Dickson said. He had the work ethic and the organizational skills such a career instils. Bickle also has a strong sense of flavours thanks to life in food, and he was a bit of the yin the Dickson’s yang.
“I’m the science and he’s more the artistic side,” Dickson said. “That’s not to say I can’t be artistic and he can’t be analytical, but our approach, we come at things from different directions… . I have one set of opinions and everyone has a sense of what they like and don’t like so it’s another voice to provide a balance of ideas about flavour profiles in student products.”
Dickson also recalled how well-liked Bickle was by his classmates when he was a student. That, even more than one’s abilities making spirits, is a job requirement, he noted.
“It wasn’t ‘Who is the best distiller?’ or ‘Who would make the best distiller?’ It’s how he works with the students,” Dickson said. “He can connect with the students on a personal level and has that sense of purpose and knows why he’s here.”
For Bickle, the job isn’t entirely unlike being in a kitchen. He’s teaching technique and ensuring quality control. Seeing his proteges bring their ideas to life has been the highlight so far. He’s also learning as much as they are, he noted.
But Bickle is a teacher and he’s using that role to impart some important lessons, including about the beauty and versatility of gin, that will shape the future of distilling in Canada. All the while, he’s keeping everything in balance much like the muse that led him here.
“I’m excited because the distilling industry is still so young,” Bickle said. “I’m happy to see students go on and have relationships through the years with them. Watching people go on and do things, I think, is going to be so rewarding.”
