Driving through Montreal in the spring is a frustrating experience – there’s construction happening on every other street, the traffic is backed up as you wait for the same stoplight for 3 cycles, and a single accident on the highways will have you sitting in stop and go for a very long time. But it’s incredible just how quickly all of that changes as soon as you’re out of the city limits, driving over rolling hills past farmhouses and the only real slowdowns are awaiting an opportunity to pass a tractor. A little further along and you’re driving through forests of maples with buckets attached to them and tubes running criss-cross between them for maple syrup production.

Whether dealing with traffic, tractors or trees, it’s all worthwhile making the trek to Mirabel to visit Côte des Saints Distillery, where a relatively young but bold and high quality whisky making operation is taking place.

It stands out from the Quebecois farmhouses and its pagoda would be more at home in Scotland than here, but it certainly evoked nostalgia and memories while driving up. It suggests an operation steeped in tradition, but a thorough tour provided by Guy Page (one of the co-founders) proved it to be a beautiful blend of both traditional and modern practices and values.

Those co-founders are not your typical craft distillers, with an owner-operator model. Three of them are brothers (Yves, Michel and Jean), and then 3 are friends (Denis, Francois, Guy) and all from diverse professional backgrounds – doctors, construction, manufacturing entrepreneurs. But they all share one thing: a passion for high quality alcohol. Some are wine aficionados with massive home cellars, others are into high quality spirits like rum and tequila. Guy is into all of it, and his Scottish heritage and regular travel to Scotland inspired him to explore the whisky industry. Their shared passion and desire to start something unique and with staying power led to this passion project which launched in 2019.

They owned land at the distillery site and at their head office/warehouse (more on that later), and sold some of it to tomato growers to fund construction while using 3 remaining fields to grow their barley. Those fields, plus 10 more they rent surround the distillery, and their water source is local to Mirabel too (and the same used in the Naya bottled water brand!).

The equipment at first is what you expect to see at a newer distillery – stainless steel washbacks and fermenters (5 day fermentation to increase complexity), hybrid beer still (with columns for white spirits), and a vendome hybrid spirit still.

Dig a little deeper and you find some less traditional equipment – high levels of automatic control, and a glycol cooling system for the stills to avoid over-use of water, which would run their water source dry and affect the entire area. It also allows them to run the stills year round with no down season.

Ask a few more questions and you find the entire operation is designed for sustainability – spent water from distillation is pumped to holding ponds where the sediment adds nutrients back to the water for use as fertilizer on the fields. Spent grain is donated to local farmers as feed for livestock, and their weekly garbage volume is no more than you’d find at the end of a typical residential driveway. It all adds up to a better than zero-footprint environmental impact – something not many distilleries can boast.

One last note on equipment – that pagoda seen on the way in is not currently in use, not is the on-site malting floor. Currently their grain is processed by Canada Maltage, but in time, they plan to produce peated whisky using floor malting and pagoda drying – showing once again the way they’re blending both traditional and modern process together. Their peat source will be from the Abitibi peat fields of Northern Quebec. They haven’t started this process yet because they wanted enough time and years under their belts to feel their house spirit and profile is stable enough to hold up to the peat – as we get into the tasting, you’ll see why I don’t think they’ll need much more time for that!

We then sat down to taste their wares, starting with their new make, which I neglected to take a picture of (spoiler: it’s clear). I was astounded by the new make which at 65% drank more like 50% and had impressive honey, cereal and sweet fruit notes. Guy explained they’re incredibly conservative in their heart cuts, with only about 10-15% of a run making it into the barrel (the rest is re-distilled in the next run). The founders and team, which include their first distiller Matt Strickland and later Gordon Steele in a consulting role, decided this back in 2019 to eliminate any hint of astringency, feinty or oily notes and ensure their house profile was clean. As we got to tasting their various releases, that choice has served them well as that house profile shines through regardless of age or cask usage.

The releases we tried were highly varied in everything but age (all fall between 5-6yrs). One might notice the bottles look a little bit like Kavalan which is intentional – Kavalan’s Vinho Barrique winning Best Single Malt in the 2015 World Whisky Awards was part of their inspiration. Their label indicate the type of release: 1 tall label is a blend of barrel types at 46%. a split label of 1 colour is a single cask at 46%. and a split label with Black top label is a cask strength single barrel release. All of their whiskies are fully aged in first fill casks – they do not engage in barrel finishing at all, and won’t release anything under 46% because as Guy put it they “they refuse to bastardize quality for price” (much to the chagrin of the SAQ).

Here are a few quick notes on these releases; note the house style coming through in basically every one.

• Bourbon/sherry blend (blue label) 46% ABV: 87% bourbon, 13% oloroso casks. a fruit salad, caramel, nutty. cereal and honey.
• Bourbon single cask (lighter green label) 46% ABV: cereal notes shine through, honey, vanilla.
• Oloroso single cask (red label) 46% ABV: a little tamer, sweet, nutty
• Oloroso CS single cask (black label, red bottom) 58.9%: oloroso shines on the nose, nutty, leather, dried fruit, beautiful dram. (i ended up buying this one)
• PX single cask (light gold label) 46%: rich dessert dram. creamy body, fruit cake, icing sugar. very unique and delicious.
• Calvados single cask (dark green) 48%: rich apple, caramel, cinnamon. like a cinnamon bun or the apple bread from the Big Apple near Trenton.
• Exclusive release for a whisky club – blend of Muscat, bourbon and oloroso, 55.1%: incredibly dry with the different cask notes from the other releases shining through too.
• Oloroso/Bourbon CS blend (black top, blue bottom) 57.3%: spice bomb, fruit salad, orchard and dark dried fruit. wow.

This tasting was incredible, but this was only the first stop on the tour. We hopped in Guy’s car and drove through the countryside to their head office and warehouse, a former helicopter repair shop, which doesn’t look very whisky-related from the outside.

Once you’re inside though, You’re walking through bay after bay of barrels. I said earlier that this group is creating something with staying power for the future, and it shows. Currently they’re bottling and selling about 50 barrels per year, but producing over 1200! The warehouse currently has over 4500 barrels on site, and that number grows daily.

As we walked through we started at cask #1 which is patiently aging, signed by the founders and team.

The variety of casks was astounding, sourced from a vast broker network worldwide, and include every type of fortified wine, ex-bourbon, ex-scotch, ex-spirit and virgin oak you can think of. Click through the pics and you’ll catch just a sampling of the variety they already have laid down.

The warehouse is humidity and temperature controlled, meaning the angels share is reduced vs ambient warehouses, but they do open the large garage doors at times through the year to encourage some temperature fluctuation and wood interaction.

We then went through the visitor centre which will soon be expanded to include more warehouse space, and a restaurant – which is the site of their annual launch party with food, live music and the launch of their new products that year. Those new launches require unanimous thumbs up from the founders before they get the green light.

We then went up to a boardroom where Guy poured me samples from a few more bottles, including some ongoing experiments and cask samples.

Some incredibly innovative ideas coming down the pipeline, here are a couple quick thoughts on each:

• Andean virgin oak, 4yr, 55%: spice bomb, less vanilla than virgin american oak, very wood forward.
• ex-Rye cask, 3.8yr, 63%: nutmeg, cloves, more baking spice, that cereal forward new make shows. absolutely gorgeous and one of the best things I’ve tasted all day.
• Tawny Port single cask release, 46%: the nose you’d guess it was port all day long. 5-6yrs old, palate balances port and that house profile beautifully. finish is 100% port again.
• Ardbeg cask, 57.7%: typical ex-islay cask whisky with the thinner peat profile. chocolate. My bias against ex-peated cask aging continues to hold here.

Guy then poured me a few more blind and asked me to guess the casks used:

• Amaro cask 65%: herbaceous and delicious. I guessed a Campari cask.
• Sauternes cask 55%: tastes young, i couldn’t guess a cask, and i felt it hadn’t picked up the sweet wine notes yet.
• PX cask strength sample: bright fruit dessert. I guessed a wine cask.

Overall, an incredible tour and tasting at a distillery that is very quickly rising in the ranks of best malts made in Canada in my opinion. Their releases sell out very quickly, but you can join their whisky club for free advance notice of their release and sometimes pre-release opportunities to buy.

Better yet, take the trek through the traffic, tractors & trees to this terrific terroir to try a tasting and tour, tout suite!