West coast, best coast. I love the Maritimes, don’t get me wrong, but BC hits differently, and Vancouver Island may be my favourite place in Canada. I’ve been a few times, and one time back in 2019, I managed to convince my wife and some friends to drive up to Campbell River to visit Shelter Point Distillery.

Why am I posting this now instead of in 2019? No good excuse – it’s been listed as “coming soon” for many years, and having worked from home since COVID, it really ought to have been written sooner. But things have changed – I have 2 kids now, we’ve moved twice, my whisky activities focussed less online and more in person. But now, on parental leave, my excuses have run out.

Shelter Point has changed a lot too since then – ownership changed, management changed, their focus on domestic vs export has changed. In the meantime, the club also bought a cask at the distillery too which has since aged 6 years and will be bottled later in 2026 for our 10th Anniversary. So now is as good a time as ever to share our visit from the before times.

Now because it’s been 7 years, the details are fuzzy – may rely more on pictures than my memory, but will share what I can, and hopefully what i share isn’t now false given the changes they’ve undergone! At the time they were a family operation and we were led around by Jacob, a son-in-law who managed sales for the company.

They’re a farm to bottle distillery for some bottlings, but also source grain, though it’s always BC grown.they grow on 400 acres, 300 of it barley, 50 wheat, and they were starting to grow rye in a former raspberry field. At the time they were going through 300 tonnes of grain per year, a number I’m sure has grown.

The equipment is beautiful – stainless steel washbacks and fermenters. They ferment for a week, generating 5-7% ABV. Tall copper stills. 5000L beer still brings the low wines to 35%, 4000L spirit still brings it to about 75% ABV. Final yield is only 400L of alcohol from a run. They have a separate still for white spirits which they distil to 96%.

After getting a quick tour of the distillery, we hopped on an ATV and drove through the picturesque fields to the warehouse. Some gorgeous areas to sit and sip.

They water down to 63.5% for barrel entry proof, and at the time their warehouses had about 2000 barrels on hand, which no doubt has grown significantly. Most of those barrels were ex-Jack Daniels, but they had 187 ex-laphroaig quarter casks, 100 virgin oak casks (which we bought one of for the club), and a variety of finishing casks from BC wineries and sherry butts.

We pulled a sample from a single malt cask in Quails Gate old vines Foch which was being finished for a few more months and bottled shortly after our visit. I was surprised at how briney the nose and palate were which you don’t often find outside of scotch, but their seaside location clearly has an impact. it had a ton of fruit and spice too. The warehouse has a perfect little tasting area as well.

After the warehouse visit, we went back to the visitor centre for some more tastings and purchases, followed by a 1.5 hour search for rental car keys that had been lost along the way, but were thankfully located in the middle of some weeds in the forest. A stressful end to the visit, though the whisky helped. We then decompressed at the nearby shoreline, a worthwhile stop to sit and sip, whether you’ve lost yor keys or not.