Elora Distilling Company

Our journey began in the late 1990s, when my partner Mark and I met Dr. Steve Thorning. He was Deputy Reeve of our little village of Elora. He invited us over to Bachelor Hall (Steve was single at the time) for “the pleasure of a cocktail”. To say that Steve was anachronistic would be an understatement, retro was how he lived.

On arrival he allowed me to pick a cocktail from his bible, an original 1946 copy of the Stork Club Bar book from New York City. I chose the Hocus Pocus, which is made with two parts Gin, one part Triple Sec and the juice of half a lime, finished with a dash of Grenadine for dramatic colour. It tastes like a boozy SweeTart candy. I was hooked. Even now, 20 years later, the Hocus Pocus is still my favourite cocktail.

The next big leap in our development came in 2006 when Mark and I were in Istanbul. We went to the Pera Palace for a cocktail. It is the grand hotel built for the passengers of the Orient Express and has had guests such as Agatha Christie, Greta Garbo, Mata Hari and Jackie Onassis-Kennedy. This was the beginning of our new hobby, having cocktails in historic landmark hotels. Our journey through 60 hotels including the Ritz in Paris, the Savoy in London and the Plaza in New York honed our taste for quality alcohol. It drove us to want to create a top quality, hand-crafted product here in Elora, Ontario.

Over the past 4 years our journey has included purchasing an amazing property in downtown Elora and building and equipping our new Distillery from the ground up. We also connected with local producers to source fresh ingredients and developed our skills to transform them into a world class product. We are now open to the public with some great tasting alcohol.

Gin has become our specialty. We have four different gins that explore the complexity and vitality of this unique beverage, as well as a seasonal gin that changes throughout the year. Often using hand foraged botanicals and unique distilling techniques, we work to create flavours that will excite your Gin palate!