Artisan Distillery & Product Qualifications

  1. Original Product: The product must have been distilled and bottled by the original producer, i.e. it cannot be a rebranded or white label product.

    • If a product is branded differently from the distillery, the distillery must own the brand. The distillery cannot submit products it produces for a person or company under a different brand.

  2. Small Scale: The distillery’s sales cannot exceed 100,000 litres of absolute ethyl alcohol per year.

  3. Independent Producer: The distillery must be owned and operated independently of other distilleries. If any owner (person, company, or other legal entity) of a distillery with a 10% or greater stake in the company has a 10% or greater stake in one or more other distilleries, the distilleries will be considered a single entity for the purposes of evaluating if those distilleries meet the Small Scale qualification.

    • Examples: (1) If a party owns 25% of Distillery A with 90,000L of sales, and 15% Distillery B with 15,000L of sales, both distilleries will be counted together as having a sales total of 105,000L and both Distilleries A and B will be excluded. (2) If a party owns 10% of Distillery A with 200,000L in sales, and 10% of Distillery B with 10,000L, Distillery A will be excluded under the Small Scale rule, and Distillery B will be excluded under the Independently Produced and Small Scale rules.

  4. Artisan Production: The distillery applies its own techniques to ferment, blend, infuse or age its products - products must be distilled or re-distilled by the distillery. Neutral Grain Spirit is allowed with technique applied (it must be redistilled). Examples of techniques which would disqualify a product include: (1) blending purchased spirits with water and adding favouring and/or colouring without redistilling, or (2) purchasing spirits to barrel age or mix with other distillery product. *

* Vermouth Exception: Due to Craft regulations in BC, distilleries which produce vermouth under a wine license can still enter that product. The product must be clearly identified under the distillery brand, and the distillery must own the branding. The vermouth must be submitted by a company which is primarily a distillery (generally as evidenced by the fact that they have other spirit products).

Artisan Bitters Qualifications

  1. Bitters must be made using alcohol extraction and real ingredients. No artificial flavours are permitted.

  2. The company must be owned and operated in Canada.

  3. The company must be the original producer – no contract-produced or white label products are permitted.

Zero-Proof Spirit Qualifications

  1. The zero-proof spirits must be produced by a distillery which meets items 1, 2, and 3 of the Artisan Distillery and Product Qualifications above.

Artisan Cocktails Qualifications

  1. The majority of alcohol ingredients by volume must meet the Artisan Distillery and Product Qualifications set our above.

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