standing as a continuous flow distillery.
In other words, they don’t produce their
whisky in batches.
“We are extremely fortunate to have,
what I believe to be, one of the strongest
master distillers in the world,” said Bilodeau.
“Master distiller Jonathan Goldberg trained
in Scotland, and is extremely passionate
about everything related to Black Velvet.”
Bilodeau says Goldberg is an innova-tor
and someone who constantly tries dif-ferent
processes and blends. This approach
to whisky production has made Goldberg
an integral part of the Black Velvet team
and ensures the infamous recipe from
Hucks and Napier continues to delight
the millions of people who purchase the
whisky annually.
Under Goldberg’s direction, the Black
Velvet team cooks a mash of straight corn
in a continuous jet cooker to convert com-plex
sugars into simple sugars that can
easily be fermented. The fermentation pro-cess
takes approximately 64 hours after
the injection of liquid yeast. After about 24
hours, the alcohol content is at about eight
per cent and reaches about 13 to 14 per
cent once complete.
“After the fermentation process we
use a modern, four-column continuous still
composed of a beer column, an extractive
distillation column, a rectifying column
and a fusel column,” said Bilodeau. As the
spirit emerges from each of these columns,
it passes through a copper condenser.
When creating hi-wines, or flavoured
whisky, Bilodeau says they have a similar
process to the corn mash where they grind
the corn or rye down to flour, add enzymes
and put it through the fermentation pro-cess.
Then, instead of using all four columns,
they distill it through the beer column,
exclusively.
“The hi-wines are intensely flavoured,”
said Bilodeau. “It has a bite to it, but it’s a
strong, flavourful bite.”
Bilodeau says these flavoured whis-kies
are then matured into bourbon-style
corn flavouring whisky for two to six years
before they add the newly made base spirit.
He dubs this process “blended at birth,”
meaning the blend of the old and new
whiskies, which are then poured into small
wood barrels at 77 per cent alcohol for
three years (at least) to blend the flavours
more thoroughly. Some barrels, he says,
have matured for over 25 years.
While Bilodeau remains hesitant to
describe Black Velvet as a craft distillery,
Under Goldberg’s direction, the Black
Velvet team cooks a mash of straight
corn in a continuous jet cooker to
convert complex sugars into simple
sugars that can easily be fermented.
he does make an interesting observation,
“To answer your question about craft, well,
every distillery has a craft if they produce
the right quality of whisky that you want. In
many ways, the craft is fueled by our enjoy-ment
and entertainment.”
Bilodeau says Heaven Hill Brands
makes it easy to enjoy their craft even as
the company experiences rapid growth in
such a short and unprecedented period
of time.
“The first thing I tell everyone, if we
had been given the opportunity to shop
the world over and pick a new owner, we
couldn’t have found a better fit for us than
Heaven Hill Brands,” said Bilodeau, who
has worked at the Black Velvet Distilling
Company since 2013. “Their corporate val-ues
are not just on paper, but rather an
embedded culture that they live by from the
top down and I’m truly proud to be a part
of this company.”
At the beginning of 2020, Bilodeau
fully understood how embedded these
values were in the company as the
COVID-19 pandemic hit Alberta in early
March. Heaven Hill Brands stopped the
production of Black Velvet and other spirits
and instructed their distilleries to start the
production of hand sanitizer instead. He
says, with great pride, the company went
into hand sanitizer production without any
intent to make money from it.
“It was to help the communities that
they live in and the countries that they
work in,” he said. “We immediately started
making hand sanitizer and supplying first
responders and senior care facilities – those
most vulnerable – with products.”
Through this production, Heaven
Hill Brands was also able to employ
employees’ family members who lost their
jobs because of the pandemic. Heaven
Hill Brands has even hired some of those
workers permanently.
“It’s such a treat to be able to do things
like that,” Bilodeau said.
D I S T I L L E R Y P R O F I L E
FALL 2020 § POURED CANADA § 15