Eau Claire Distillery’s David Farran has claimed a win against the Goliaths of the global spirits industry.
Three years after opening its doors, the Turner Valley distillery won some of the top prizes at the 2017 San Francisco World Spirits Competition and the 2017 Spirits International Prestige (SIP) Awards.
With five awards, the wins put Eau Claire in some prestigious company.
Farran said the San Francisco competition is one of the top international awards in the industry, pitting Eau Claire against some of the biggest names in the business.
“I would say that the majority of the brands that would be up there would be the big international players,” he said. “It ranks us as some of the best spirits in the world. I would say that it genuinely puts us in that category.”
In San Francisco, Eau Claire won a gold medal in the flavoured vodka category for its Prickly Pear EquineOx, while its Parlour Gin received a bronze medal in the gin category. Eau Claire’s winning entries were up against a large field, with 2,252 spirits entered, the most in the San Francisco competition’s 17-year history.
It’s the second year Eau Claire has won the event.
“Last year we won in the same competition and because there are so many new gins and so many new brands coming out, to be able to accomplish that in a consistent way two years in a row is a huge accomplishment to us,” said Farran. “That’s a great endorsement, it’s not a fluke it’s happened twice.”
Eau Claire also took top honours in the SIP Awards where the parlour gin beat out more than 45 other entries to win a Consumers Choice award and a Best in Class – Platinum Award. The Prickly Pear won silver in the flavoured vodka category. The SIP awards included 673 brands judged by a 118-member consumer panel.
Farran said the SIP Awards are the greatest endorsement because they’re decided by regular consumers based on blind taste.
“They’re not the aficionados,” he said.
Farran said the awards are a strong endorsement of what Eau Claire set out to do from the very beginning and an indicator they are on the right track.
“If we continue to win these awards it tells us that we’re doing the right thing,” he said.
Farran said the awards will help as Eau Claire looks to grow its distribution.
He said the win has brought inquiries from the U.S. from people interested in selling his product. Right now, Eau Claire is only available in Alberta, with the exception of a small number of locations in New York City.
“I think what we didn’t realize by winning these awards is how much international interest we would get for distribution,” said Farran.
What sets Eau Claire apart is that it uses barley for the base to make their vodka and gin, said master distiller Caitlin Quinn.
“All our spirits are made from Alberta malted barley,” she said. “The process we go through is very similar to a single malt distillery.”
This means the same level of quality that goes into making a single malt whiskey goes into their vodka and gin.
Winning the awards is not just a recognition of the quality of Eau Claire’s final product, but also of the work everyone at the distillery puts in every day.
“Being a craft distillery everyone does everything so it’s nice to have that recognition that what we do on a daily basis is actually appreciated in the products that we put out,” said Quinn. “We do everything on site, bottle and label, so a lot of effort has gone on to that one bottle that we sent to a competition, so it’s nice to know that people actually appreciated that effort.”
