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Niagara College’s Teaching Distillery has added seven new medals to its growing collection–the most it’s ever won in a single competition.

Of the 10 spirits entered into the 2024 Canadian Artisan Spirit Competition last summer, the Distillery earned a gold medal for its Mediterranean Vodka, a silver (and Merit in Terroir) for its Taylor Rosso Vermouth, and bronze medals for its Amaro Sparacci, Tanzanite Gin, School Spirits Vodka, Single Malt and Eastern Hospitality.

The winners were announced recently by the Artisan Distillers of Canada.

“Winning seven medals at one national competition is an outstanding accomplishment for our Teaching Distillery, but an even bigger testament to the calibre of applied learning at Niagara College,” said Steve Gill, General Manager of the College’s Learning Enterprises. “Our trailblazing Teaching Distillery continues to shine at national and international competitions because the students behind the entries are excelling at the skills they’re learning at Niagara College. Congratulations to the amazing alumni distillers, staff and students behind our latest award-winning spirits!”

Simon Raj, who helped create the gold medal-winning Mediterranean Vodka alongside classmates Disha Bhendwal, Manpreet Kaur and Jeewanjot Kaur, described the win as “an absolute honour.

“It was something unimagined and unbelievable,” said Raj, who’s originally from Bokaro Steel City, India.
Mediterranean Vodka is a neutral spirit with very little sugar but several spices that are often found in Mediterranean cooking, including basil, mint, lemon and coriander.

Raj said the complex flavour and aroma of the different spices and herbs made it tricky to get the proportions just right.

“The major challenge (we) faced was to get the composition of these four spices right. We had to make extracts of each spice separately and in different concentrations of ABV neutral spirit. There was a total of five trials done for us to reach the final proposition for the spirit.”

Eastern Hospitality, one of five spirits that earned a bronze medal, was inspired by the flavour profile of Shochu, a Japanese distilled spirit made from grains and vegetables. The koji process is used in the production of Shochu. It’s a confirmation process that uses another microbe to help take over the role of the breakdown of the sugars in the process–and it’s not commonly used in North America.

Elisa Lavigna, one of four students who worked on the spirit, said it was tricky to work with rice flakes.

“The main challenges we encountered through our project included working with rice flakes and their different response to standard processing, understanding what the best approach was to incorporate koji in our making process, and last but not least, having proper time management to have every component sufficiently aged and blended by the required deadline,” Lavigna said.

Fellow student distiller Mitchell Bouwsema agreed, and said it took some experimentation to figure out the combination and proportion of grains that would make the best tasting product, in addition to integrating koji into the project.

“We knew we wanted a rice-forward product that would showcase the unique qualities rice could impart to a whisky, but what else was needed to create the best tasting product?” Bouwsema said. “So we distilled corn and barley as well and experimented with blends and ratios to find the ideal combination. Eastern Hospitality ended up being 71 per cent rice-based with 24 per cent corn and five per cent barley supporting to round out its flavour.”

Bouwsema said imparting as much barrel aging as possible in only four months was also challenging.

“Whisky needs to be aged for a minimum of three years in oak barrels in Canada, which is why our product is technically a grain spirit and not a true whisky,” he said. “We only had four months from start to finish to make the best product we could. Fortunately, our team was driven and dedicated, and we received lots of support from our professors.”

Kanda Watcharosin and Nick Liu rounded out the Eastern Hospitality team.

A lack of amaro options in Ontario sparked the idea for the bronze medal-winning Amarao Sparacci, which has asparagus as a key ingredient.

“As we started building out our ideas, (group mate) Sophie (Lovink) and I were discussing…how we’d love to create something we would be excited to drink as professionals behind a bar,” said Rhys Higham, now an assistant distiller at Dillon’s Distillery in Beamsville. “The key ingredient to our amaro, wild asparagus, came about while discussing other successful products and how Cynar focuses on artichoke. Because wild asparagus is so plentiful in the area, we decided to give it a try and it became our favourite botanical; it’s what gives the majority of the sweet-earthy flavour to our amaro.”

Group mate Pierre Mansah said it was a combination of family history, beverage trends and “a desire to challenge ourselves as blenders” that inspired the spirit.

“Sophie’s great-grandmother was an Italian immigrant who would distill her own ‘burnt sugar’ amaro at home in the Niagara region,” said Mansah, who now works at Arterra Wines Canada. “(My) father made a product using a similar process during his childhood. It piqued the group’s interest in amaro and the wide range of flavours and ways to make them.”

The Distillery’s silver medal-winning Taylor Rosso Vermouth is a favourite of Head Distiller David Dickson, who described it as having some “bigger, bolder flavours.

“We actually used some fortified port-style wine that we teamed up with the distiller in the winery to make,” he said. “The winery was working on a port, we still had some spirit to fortify (and) there was some of that wine that either they didn’t need or didn’t quite meet their balance. We took some of that wine blended in a kind of standard white wine (and) it added all these different botanical flavours. It’s the most botanicals we’ve ever had in a product at Niagara College, and it was really complex.”

Tanzanite Gin (bronze) was inspired by the classic London dry style with some flavours of the newer style of gin, Dickson said. Aged with cherry wood chips, the spirit has some wood character but is still “bright and refreshing.”

The Single Malt Whisky (bronze) is now an end-of-term production for first-term students, Dickson continued. It’s made every first semester but takes three years to age.

“The batch that we submitted was the first batch we ever made,” he said. “We’re always really excited about this particular spirit. It’s a long time in the making, but the students that are currently enrolled will get a chance to perhaps bottle the spirit that was made three years ago and then theirs goes into the barrel at the same time.”

The School Spirits Vodka, the fifth bronze medal-winning spirit, is the Distillery’s standard vodka with a clean, neutral profile.

“We did kind of a multiple distillation process, the last one being a really neutral percentage–a really high ABV above 96 per cent,” Dickson said. We always do a couple different vodka runs and we always pick the best one to become vodka.”

Speaking to the number of medals the Teaching Distillery won at the competition, Dickson said he’s proud of the students’ accomplishments–not just because of the wins, but because of the work put into the spirits.

“With the amount of time we have to develop these projects and everything that goes into them, it’s so impressive–the quality that the students are able to achieve. Releasing them is one of the happiest days of the year for me.”

Mediterranean Vodka, School Spirits Vodka, Eastern Hospitality, Taylor Rosso Vermouth and Tanzanite Gin are available for a limited time at the Wine Visitor + Education Centre while supplies last.