Willibald Farm Distillery’s Gingerbread Gin
Scoffing at fairy tale wisdom, Willibald Distillery in Ayr, Ontario has just released a captivating gingerbread gin that’s guaranteed to put a sugar-frosted smile on your face. And unlike fairy tale ginger bread stories, which as you will remember, never end well, this one ends with happily ever after.
Take Hansel & Gretel. While walking through the woods, the siblings come across a gingerbread house and begin to eat it. The elderly property owner overreacts in a moment of rage, and screams she is going to eat the youthful vandals. Resorting to slander, they call her a witch, so she has no choice but to detain them. The old woman manages to lock Hansel in a cage, buying time until the authorities arrive. But Gretel shoves the poor woman into a hot stove murdering her in cold blood. After robbing the house of its riches, they escape into the forest never to be seen again.
Sorry Hansel and Gretel, but you need to be 19+ to enjoy Willibald’s gingerbread. “We are big on the holiday releases and want to do something every year,” explains Willibald co-founder Cameron Formica. “The first year, we did the Winter Liquor, the second year we did the Winter’s Feast Gin and now this year it’s Gingerbread Gin.”
Willibald’s set the bar high with their Winter Liquor. That spirit began with plenty of elbow grease – they hand crushed fifty bushels of organic Paula Red and Gala apples with a wooden post. “This was in the early days of the distillery when we didn’t have all the equipment,” reminisces Formica. The apples along with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, star anise, allspice and cardamon soaked in the distillery’s 100% Ontario whisky grain spirit for a week. After straining the solids out, the distillery team then aged the spirit for 1 ½ to 2 years in ex-bourbon casks. The result was this exceptional spirit that combined the aggressive spiced flavours of mulled wine with whisky laced calvados.
This year’s gingerbread gin continues Willibald’s annual tradition of building innovative winter flavours. The team soaks carefully measured quantities of traditional gin botanicals such as juniper, orris root, coriander, and angelica root in base spirit for 48 hours. Then they charge the pot still with this rich botanical medley and allow the vapours from the distillation to pass through a gin basket containing more botanicals. “For example, fresh citrus was vapour infused to help the woody flavours pop. We wanted this gin to be full-bodied and found that this method gave us something rounder,” says Formica.
At this point, the gin is divided into two batches and proofed down before baking spices are macerated in it for 24-hours. The lower alcohol percentage helps control the level of extraction in each batch, which contains varying intensities of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice, vanilla, and fresh ginger. The gin comes to life when the two batches are blended and sweetened with a drop of cane sugar.
The result is a balanced aromatic fusion of freshly baked gingerbread brightened by citrus and cranberry undertones. Gingerbread Gin is so tightly integrated at 40% alcohol that even the big bad wolf could not blow this house down. Woody juniper-studded forest notes add to the vibrant mix.
The 375ml bottle’s elegant label illustration, by artist Caitlyn Murphy, matches the gin’s overall tone. A winter scene portrays the distillery as a gingerbread house, including the iconic silo that sits next to the still room.
Willibald's Gingerbread Gin is available at the LCBO and the distillery’s store for $24.95. Run, run as fast as you can to catch a bottle before it is gone.