Artist in Residence Distillerie Hawkesbury
Outside, the monolithic building on Tupper Street in Hawkesbury has a gleaming black aluminum and glass façade only partially obscuring shining 6,000-litre copper pot stills and other stainless steel equipment, several stories above which is the illuminated sign Artist in Residence Distillerie.
Inside the 25,000 sq.-ft. facility, sister venue to a seven-year-old Artist in Residence (AiR) Gatineau location, two brothers – Pierre and Michel Mantha – are at work making the whisky which has recently become available in area LCBO outlets.
“We launched our first beverage on October 2, our smoked maple whisky. It’s doing really well and sold out in two LCBO outlets in about 24 hours,” says Pierre.
Overseeing distilling operations, Michel watches as spent grain is augured out of the first part of the system into a plastic container about the size of a dumpster. A few metres away, “moonshine,” crystal clear and about 74 per cent alcohol by volume (ABV), is pouring from a spigot into a squat stainless-steel drum for its next stage: dilution with water to 58 per cent before being piped into barrels for aging until 2027-28. On the shelf, it will be 30 per cent ABV.
To be labelled “Canadian whisky,” as required by Canada’s “Food and Drug Act,” beverage alcohol must be mashed, distilled and aged in Canada in small wooden vessels (such as barrels) for at least three years and be at least 40% alcohol by volume: this current AiR lot will be infused as smoky maple Canadian whisky.
AiR whisky is mostly corn with relatively small percentages of barley and rye. For its part, the spent grain, sometimes known as draff, makes its way back to area farmers as cattle feed. In a way, it closes a circle that began when AiR sourced grains from those local farms.
For more of this story, visit Andre Paquette Editions Tribune-Express.
