SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
NOVEMBER 2017
By David MacDonald L aura, I understand that you and your business partners Rob Heuvel – your husband – and Joe Kelly made the decision very early-on to get behind your vodka, to make it one of you your flagship products. What motivated this decision? LB: While there’s a craze with whiskey and dark spirits, a lot of people are going back to vodka. And vodka has always been the number one selling alcohol – not a lot of people realize this. It goes into so many mixed drinks. But now, there’s a craft culture out there that’s looking for vodkas to sip. Among the 25 or so craft distill- eries in Ontario, we’re one of only three or four that is focused on vodka. We didn’t come to the decision lightly. We’re very focused. We took a lot of time, seven years in fact, doing research on every conceivable aspect of the industry before we got off the ground. It turns out that a lot of companies produce vodka as something to do while they’re waiting for whiskey. Whiskey takes three years; it’s a huge capital investment – and you need revenue. A lot of companies actually don’t produce the vodka; they buy it commercially. They buy neutral grain spirit – NGS – and either quickly re-distill it or just cut it and make it vodka. Some of them cut it to make vodka in order to make gin, so their gin might be their own recipe of botanicals but it’s made with NGS. Our vodka is vodka – nothing is repurposed. We make our vodka with corn and we do get the question often, ‘Why not potatoes?’ There’s a couple of different reasons for that. In PEI and BC and Western Ontario where they make potato vodka, they have easy access to potatoes. We don’t grow potatoes in Eastern Ontario; we’re a
PMS 534 C - Nautical Blue
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • NOVEMBER 2017
It’s poetry. It’s all poetry. The logo; the name; the Whiskyjack Rye; the Von Schoultz Vodka; the Prescott White Rye; the Conestoga Gin; and the International Spirits Challenge 2017 bronze medal winning 1000 Islands Moonshine. “The logo itself really has a couple of different components,” explained Laura Bradley, co-founder and co-owner of King’s Lock Craft Distillery in Johnstown, Ontario. “One is obviously the maple leaf. The maple leaf is a very valued part of our collective heritage in Canada. The “crack” in the leaf is actually in the shape of the St. Lawrence River and the inner-leaf on top of the river is a commonly used symbol for organic. Our branding expert is top-notch,” she said with a matter-of- factness that perfectly punctuated my appreciation of a logo that can be easily mistaken for a heraldic symbol. “We went through quite a few names before the design process could even begin,” she continued. “At the end of the day we decided, we realized, that where we are physically located on the land is perpendicular to where the rapids start coming from Lake Ontario heading to the Atlantic – it’s the first obstacle of rapids. It was, depending on which way you were coming from, the first or last point of the locks created, commissioned by the Crown of King George III. So at one point in history, all of the locks in what is now the St. Lawrence Seaway were owned by the King. For us, the essence of the area, its history, and the component that the river played in it all, that was really important.” Yet, the most poetic, the most expressive, the most Romantic element of the distillery’s moniker is in its implications.
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grain crop country and we’re completely locally-sourced, except for our sugar. Is it discernible; is there a difference in terms of taste and aroma – the experience? LB: Our corn vodka is a little different. It definitely has a sweetness to it, but it doesn’t overshadow its full aroma. It also doesn’t smell like rubbing alcohol like NGS-based vodkas or have that alcohol burn. We’ve created a beautifully clean, smooth, not overly complex vodka from local organic corn. It’s a win- win because our superior product helps to promote local
farmers not far from the distillery. We know where our corn comes from, how the farmers grew it, what kind of seeds they were using. We get a lot of visitors to the distillery who drink their vodka straight; some people like it on ice. This is definitely a vodka for them. We’ve created this vodka that is so smooth, is so delicate, and has a beautiful mouthfeel – it has a lot of clean- ness to it. If cocktails are your thing, it blends so smoothly – there’s nothing harsh about it. What has allowed the “craft culture” that you men- tioned earlier, Laura, to flourish so much since Provin- cial restrictions have been loosened, somewhat anyway, over the last five years or so? LB: We watched wine go through this transition where people realized that you didn’t have to be a big company; you can make great wine locally. It created a subculture of people who not only loved locally- grown wine, but they wanted to be educated about the process and take tours and really experience the product. Craft beer took off 15 years ago or so because wine really set a precedent. With craft beer, even more so than wine, people were opened to a world, a plethora of tastes. It also helped break people away from the two or three brand only mentality. Mind you, craft distilling is still very small compared to brewing; we’re still in our infancy and waiting to take the next step. Educat- ing the public as much as we can is the best way to help craft distilling grow. People need to know that great products don’t have to come from overseas or foreign lands.
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“We took a lot of time, seven years in fact, doing research on every conceivable aspect of the industry before we got off the ground.”
LB: It’s hard sometimes to move into an existing building and make the building green – we get that. It can cost a fair amount of money. But it definitely has its advantages when you have a say in a new build. We create a lot of hot water in our process, for example, and we capture that and use it in cleaning and for other purposes. We knew that if we thought outside the box that we could really limit our carbon footprint. “We’ve created this vodka that is so smooth, is so delicate, and has a beautiful mouthfeel – it has a lot of cleanness to it. If cocktails are your thing, it blends so smoothly – there’s nothing harsh about it.” We share our 4 000 square feet production space with a brewery – we actually knew the landlord before; his son runs the brewery. It’s really a family environment. We’re in the south-facing side of the building looking towards the river. We also share a boiler. My husband and other business partnerdesigned the space with production in mind. It’s not just an industrial building, which you have to be in in Ontario. All the floors are sloped and have drains, and we meet those sorts of requirements, but we’re really proud of our green-focused design choices. We’ve included a lot of windows for natural light, for instance, and these have another great impact: you can also see our still with its columns from the road when you drive by. Like I said, distill- ing isn’t a hidden world anymore. I’m sure the readers would love to hear about the fruits of your collective labour, Laura. The bottle, for me, is reminis- cent of the Royal crier’s bell and the variety of spirits you offer is diverse yet not overwhelming.
There’s also a cache created by reality TV now with shows like Moonshiners. Distilling used to be this hidden thing and people are just recently getting the chance to see in-person behind-the- scenes. Even people well-versed in brewing and winemaking often have no idea how spirits are made because societally it’s always been a closed door process. It’s really an unveiling; we’ve opened-up the door on this secret. We have windows in our retail space so that people can see into the distillery and see every step of the process. People are curious about the process and the questions we get from people who weren’t inquisitive when they first came but then see the founda- tional steps of a recipe in action are incredible. Like any artisan product, any organic product, people want to know what’s in it. Knowing about the impact of local foods on your diet, your body, and the connection to your environment is a really big component for us. We knew that philosophy could be applied to spirits and that there was a demand for it amongst the craft culture. Finding fresh, locally-sourced ingredients was a major part of turning our vision into a reality. That’s how we came to embrace corn for our vodka. We wanted to do something organic and we wanted to highlight that there’s so much opportunity to be creative and still stay local – I should say that we do import our sugar, though. Being local, being sustainable and green is really paramount to us. We want people to ask questions, to get educated, to know what a cut is and how batch distilling differs from contin- uous and or what a cut is or what a pot still is. We want to talk about what that means when you drink it. It’s not uncommon for someone to come in for a taste and then spend a half hour talking to us. We love it. How does the distillery itself, your location at 5 Newport Drive, help you meet your green goals?
We have three white spirits –Von Schoultz Vodka, Prescott
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White Rye, and the Conestoga Gin –and two dark spirits – Whiskyjack Rye and the 1000 Islands Moonshine. The colour of each of them is natural because we’re organic – we don’t add anything. People don’t often realize that it is legal in Canada toadd caramel colour and not declare it on the bottle. Many of the big name dark spirits that people drink are the colour they are as a result of caramel colour and not the barrel. We can say without hesitation to people that what they’re drinking is 100 percent corn or rye and that the colouring comes from the wood when we age it. We age our spirits in used bourbon barrels – and we add-in oak chips. (We have about 3 000 litres aging right now..) “Knowing about the impact of local foods on your diet, your body, and the connection to your environment is a really big component for us.” And while I understand that you do online sales and ship within Ontario, I’m wondering how your relation- ship with the LCBO came to be? Last year the LCBO was getting so much push from local craft distillers to open up their process. There are more than 500 LCBO stores, I believe, and it’s the go-to for most Ontarians. For us, the local market is great, but it’s limited, it’s regional. Getting on the shelves at the LCBO is a must for any small distillery that wants to sustain its growth. The LCBO has sped-up the process quite a bit – it took us eight months as opposed to the year-plus wait of the past. We applied in late October last year and we got full-entry in late May. We more-or- less decided to go full-on. We went with four of our five products at the time – now we have six. There are limitations to the LCBO process. For instance, you can only submit four products. We can easily supply all six of our products, even if it’s by the pallet. But it’s still opened-up the market for us. We can now go from store to store and convince LCBOs throughout Ontario to list us. There certainly are a lot of proactive managers who want to feature locally-made products, especially certified organic ones. There are other managers who are a lot more conser- vative with their shelf space because they operate stores where selling huge volumes is the only thing that matters. We hope that the corporate powers that be start to guaran- tee Ontario craft distillers a certain amount of shelf space – we should have a footprint in those stores. We are building relationships with the employees, the staff, and the managers, but it’s a lot of work supplying individual stores
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that run at su ch different paces – especially in the Ottawa area. What’s on the King’s Lock CV, as it were, at this point that makes you stand out to the more proactive managers? Have you entered any of your spirits in any provincial or national competitions? As far as awards go, we know the LCBO likes to see awards. We entered our 1000 Islands Moonshine into the 2017 Inter- national Spirits Challenge in London, England – it’s a very big competition. We brought home a bronze medal in our first year in operation. We were in the same category as Havana 3 Year and Angostura 5 Year – there were a lot of famous rums. That’s really what our 1000 Islands Moon- shine is: rum. It was all done by blind taste-testers and it’s now internationally-recognized. We’re pretty excited. Actually, the 1000 Islands Moonshine is really great with an artisanal ginger that we sell. You can make a Dark and Stormy with the Jack’s Gingembre artisan ginger beer that we carry and have that with pulled pork and beans. We’re actually planning a session here in November, a cheese and spirits pairing. A nice Caesar made with Walter Craft Caesar Mix, which we also carry, with steak and fresh vegetables is a really great pairing, too. We really believe that we have a product for everyone and that food pairings are a great way to find what’s best for you. Spirits are really coming into their own where people are starting to realize that it’s not about the quantity you drink. There’s more to the quality, sitting and enjoying a libation,
sipping it with a meal or cheese or dessert. There’s a lot of excitement behind people learning to do that the right way. You aren’t limited to wine or beer. What can the foodies and craft enthusiasts expect when they come to Johnstown in November for the cheese and spirits pairing event? We’re just closing-in on one year in operation, so we just came through our first summer. We’re in a fairly busy tourism region with the St. Lawrence River and we see a lot more traffic from June through September here than we do the rest of the year. But that’s not to say that it shuts down around here going into the Holiday Season. We’re doing Groupon tours and we’re getting a lot of calls about that. People are coming from Ottawa, which is an hour away – they’re starting to make it an adventure. We had three couples show up in a limousine for a 25 th Anniversary celebration. They were touring the wineries and breweries in the area and made us one of their whistle stops. They were fantastic. We took some photos together and I put them up on Instagram. For now, the three owners are the primary employees right now. We do get some help in retail; we had a summer student, for instance. We’re now looking at a co-op student for the fall term. We sometimes have friends and family help us out when we’re bottling and things like that, but for the most part, it’s me, my husband Rob Heuvel, and Joe Kelly. We are starting a transition towards some- thing a bit bigger, but it’s worked well with the three of us.
Please visit klcraftdistillery.ca for more details.
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NOVEMBER 2017 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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KING’S LOCK CRAFT DISTILLERY
5 Newport Drive Johnstown, ON K0E 1T1
(613) 704 - 2529
www.klcraftdistillery.ca
Workmark Type Treatment
PMS 534 C - Nautical Blue
PMS Warm Gray 4 C - Gray meets cool and warm
Black
4 C - Canadian aged red
as spotlighted in the NOVEMBER 2017 issue of SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
www.spotlightonbusinessmagazine.com
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