{"id":19723,"date":"2013-04-05T00:02:18","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T05:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19723"},"modified":"2013-04-04T13:34:40","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T18:34:40","slug":"northern-quebec-is-the-home-of-the-worlds-best-gin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/04\/05\/northern-quebec-is-the-home-of-the-worlds-best-gin\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Quebec is the home of the world’s best gin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or so Maclean’s<\/em> says. Thanks to Canada’s odd patchwork of post-Prohibition trade restrictions between provinces, Ungava by Domaine Pinnacle<\/a> is only available in Alberta, BC, and Quebec itself:<\/p>\n

It is a difficult gin to miss. When Ungava won a Best of Show award at the prestigious World Spirits Competition last week, a judge noted its \u201cunusual colour that helps grab your senses.\u201d It\u2019s perhaps the most polite way of drawing attention to Ungava\u2019s yellow tint, about which Pinnacle president Charles Crawford is slightly more blunt. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit like morning\u2019s vitamin-enriched urine,\u201d he says. His PR people prefer \u201csunshine yellow.\u201d<\/p>\n

The process by which Ungava gin is made is even more peculiar than its colour. An ice cider producer by trade, Crawford has a history of wonky tinctures \u2014 Pinnacle also produces maple-infused whiskey and a cider-brandy concoction. \u201cIce cider is a good product, but you can only make so much of it,\u201d he says. \u201cWe decided to get into spirits, because there aren\u2019t many that are uniquely Canadian.\u201d In fact, Crawford wanted the gin to be truly, pre-colonially Canadian. He whittled down a list of 40 indigenous herbs, berries and flowers (\u201cNothing planted by Europeans\u201d) to six ingredients, all found on the Ungava Peninsula in Nunavik: cloudberries; crowberries; Labrador tea; a Labrador tea cousin known as Ukiurtatuq, or \u201cArctic blend\u201d; wild rosehips, which lend the gin its yellow colour; and of course juniper, without which Ungava wouldn\u2019t be proper gin.<\/p>\n

Every year, Crawford hires \u201cthese two guys from Kuujjuaq\u201d (he\u2019s unsure of their names) to pick the botanicals during Ungava\u2019s four-week harvesting season, which usually begins in late August. The pair pack \u201ca couple hundred kilos\u201d of their pickings into clear, pillowy bags and send them 1,500 km straight south to Ungava\u2019s production facility in Cowansville, about an hour\u2019s drive east of Montreal. A neutral spirit made with locally grown corn is infused with the botanicals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or so Maclean’s says. Thanks to Canada’s odd patchwork of post-Prohibition trade restrictions between provinces, Ungava by Domaine Pinnacle is only available in Alberta, BC, and Quebec itself: It is a difficult gin to miss. When Ungava won a Best of Show award at the prestigious World Spirits Competition last week, a judge noted its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,6],"tags":[104,113,661],"class_list":["post-19723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-cancon","tag-booze","tag-quebec","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-587","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19724,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19723\/revisions\/19724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}