The sales of gin in Canada went from $179.9 million to just over $286 million, from 2011 to 2018.
The resurgence of cocktails and craft distilling has had a lot to do with this; gin is relatively quick to distil and we saw the rise of the 'celebrity mixologist' and cocktail competitions.

Now that many craft distillers have several years under their belts, their rums have aged and are coming on strong. (Rum must age for at least a year to be called rum in Canada.)

Here at Liquid Assets, we are seeing customers looking for Nova Scotia craft rum by name, more and more.

In Nova Scotia, there are several distilleries making their own rum from fermentation to distillation, and ageing them for various lengths of time to create dynamic, interesting and in the end, premium, spirits.

Beyond the tiki-cocktail, rum's inclusion in the menus of Nova Scotia's bars and restaurants has also become elevated. Compass Distillers' Apple Cinnamon Old Fashioned includes two of their Rums and is described as apple pie on the rocks, and Shane Beehan of Lot Six not only includes local rums on his bar, he goes next level with rum history and cocktails seminars at events such as the Spirited Away Festival in Lunenburg. Here at Halifax Stanfield, the post-security restaurant Bia Mara includes Ironworks Distillery's 5-year Aged Rum in one of their cocktails. The 5 Fathom Dark Rum from Barrelling Tide Distillery recently won Gold with Distinction and Best in Class at the Canadian Artisan Spirit Competition. Ironworks Bluenose Rum won World's Best Dark Rum in London England in 2015, and they have just released a Maple Rum, aged in an American Oak Bourbon barrel.  We've been delighted with the taste experience from Coldstream Clear Distillery's 1749 Single Barrel Aged Rum and are excited to create some holiday cocktails with it!

The next time you're out on the town, ask for a rum cocktail made with a Nova Scotia fermented and distilled rum.

Beyond its well-known use in cocktails, local premium local rums are excellent for sipping! We often think of whiskies for sipping, but rum is proving to be a less costly and just-as-enjoyable alternative. 

Rum Sipping Tips From Huffington Post:

-Use a good glass: As with a good whisky, a good glass will help elevate the aroma. Think about a snifter glass as a good option.
Warm it up: Serve the rum at room temperature, and don't be afraid to cup the glass and warm it with your hands. The warmer temperature will help with both flavour and aroma.
-Sniff softly: Don't take in a huge whiff of air, as the alcohol will overpower your senses. Instead, approach it slowly and try to get more of the subtle notes.
-Sip, Drink, Exhale: Take in a small sip first and roll it around your tongue to coat your palate. Then take a more generous sip to get more of those flavours. Don't forget to exhale afterwards, as the alcohol will give off more notes.
-Look for unexpected flavour: Most people assume they know what rum tastes like, but a good rum will surprise you. You may smell caramel banana at first, for example, but taste nutmeg and spice after.

So try some! The twenty-five dollar mass-produced rum is going to taste like twenty-five dollar rum - try some premium local rums and treat them like you would a decent whisky, gin or tequila, and you'll see the value immediately. Drinking less but better quality alcohol is also a trend :)

Finding the right Nova Scotia wine as a gift can be simple, and there are a lot of amazing options you can gift with pride. We carry over 80 at our small shop alone!

According to WSET Global, important factors to consider include:

Who is the recipient - do they have a favourite wine style or one they say they'd love to try, is there a label that relates to their name somehow, is there a Nova Scotia winery that they love to visit? Be sure to explain your choice on the card that accompanies the gift!

Ask for help - " Asking a shop assistant for help is not accepting defeat, it’s the smart move. They will likely be highly educated and have tasted the full range so can give you the best service and tailor their knowledge to your desires. Yes, they want to make a sale, but they will value your satisfaction way above how much you spend." -WSET Global. It's true!

If you are gifting to someone not familiar with Nova Scotia wines, think single variety grapes. Our hybrid wine grapes are often unlike what is available in other parts of Canada, and tasting one special L'Acadie Blanc, Seyval Blanc, Marquette or Marechal Foch wine will be a new and novel experience for many recipients.

If your budget is a little larger, gift a flight of wines. Tidal Bay wine from two or three different wineries will make for a fun evening or dinner party for your recipient as they explore the similarities and differences.

Think outside the box; there are still and sparkling meads, fruit wines, ice wines and dessert wines all made here in Nova Scotia that will impress and delight.

Still not sure? Give an experience! We love working with Sip & Taste Tours out of Halifax.

According to owner Susan Downey-Lim: 

"We offer wine tour gift certificates that can be purchased for any amount or any tour. When your recipients want to book, they choose the tour/day and enter their gift code to redeem. They never expire and we offer tours all year. Tours run 7 days a week May 1-Oct 31 and on Saturdays all winter (Nov 1-April 30) plus a shuttle to the Icewine Festival on Feb 14, 15, 21, 22."

Best of all, you can purchase online, and they offer food and beer tours, too!

Remember that price is not as important as thought and research. The right fit in wine is far easier to find than the right fit in gloves.

 (Thanks to Jost and Mercator Vineyards for the great pics and great wines.) 

Guest Post!

Sheila Bird, Boxing Rock Brewing

Beer pairing is part art, part science and a whole lot of fun! Typically beer pairing involves beer paired with food, sometimes beer paired with people (you know a funky farmhouse Brett paired with your hippie Icelandic goat farmer cousin or a light lagered ale paired with your football tossing or hockey playing bro-in-law or a tart sour for your ex-beauty queen aunt...you get the point), or beer is also often paired with activities.

Well, this holiday season we’ve decided to pair a beer with all of your favourite holiday ‘moments’. So, part art, part science and a whole lot of fun here are our 12 beers of Christmas paired perfectly with your favourite holiday moments.

1. Trimming the tree beer – Tatamagouche’s North Shore Lagered Ale - A nice refreshing, crisp in-between (an ale and a lager) beer with hints of both ale (light spice and citrus) and lager (bready) flavours, this beer is a perfect starting off place as you trim your tree and sing your favourite holiday tunes.

2. Christmas eve afternoon home from last-minute shopping – Propeller’s NZ Pils – Needing something super refreshing and thirst-quenching after your last-minute power shopping trip try this fun pilsner featuring hops from New Zealand which means lots of fresh citrus!

3. Christmas Eve – Boxing Rock’s Wild Axe Pilsener - A sipping session beer (a complete juxtaposition?!) that adds a bit of spice, and has the classic Bohemian Pilsner crispness that refreshes and pairs well with balancing time in front of the fire and running around getting the last-minute Christmas stuff done.

4. Christmas beer for Santa – Garrison’s Wintervention Imperial Stout – Santa is a hard-working man; he deserves something that’ll warm him up and keep him going. This strong stout will do the trick, and it pairs so well with cookies!

5. Midnight Christmas Eve wrapping presents – Big Spruce’s Cereal Killer Oatmeal Stout – Now it’s your turn for something dark, strong and rich (that also pairs nicely with cookies!) as you feverishly wrap those last presents!

6. Christmas morning(ish) opening presents – Roof Hound Operation Mongoose Mojito Kettle Sour OR Roof Hound Phoenix Burnt Orange Stout – This is a hard one, but Roof Hound just happens to have two different, yet great “morning” beers (not that we are condoning drinking before noon) if you want mint, lime, tart and refreshing the Mojito Kettle Sour is super delicious. If you prefer a dry, roasty beer full of orange and coffee notes go for the Burnt Orange Stout.

7. Christmas brunch/lunch – Good Robot El Espinazo Del Diablo – Add a nice spiciness to your holiday brunch! This light, refreshing lager is flavoured with lime zest and jalapenos; perfect with eggs of any kind!

8. Christmas post-nap/post-hike – Trider’s Mean Joe Bean Coffee Blonde – Regardless of whether you and your family are the ‘nap-type or hiking type’ post-Christmas brunch this blonde ale will refresh and delight. Light, crisp and refreshing this blonde explodes with coffee flavour!

9. Christmas cooking/in the kitchen – Trider’s Rod’s Red - A session red ale, but with spice and a smooth caramel backbone, that adds nice flavours to your cooking! Add to your gravy, your sauce, your cookies, even to your mashed potatoes (a little for you, a little for your cooking!)

10. Christmas avoiding your family/meltdown –Boxing Rock’s The Vicars Cross Double IPA – Yes, it happens to the best of us; that time during the holidays where you maybe feel like crying, laughing and screaming all at the same time. For that moment, when you escape to your “happy place” bring this nice, strong, balanced sipping beer along with you; we promise it’ll do the trick!

11. Christmas movie watching (anything from Die Hard to The Christmas Carol to It’s a Wonderful Life) – Propeller Galaxy IPA – Something fun, fruity, juicy and delicious for your holiday movie session. A bit like a nice fruity dessert this IPA offers pineapple, peach, citrus, tangerine and mango notes; perfect with a slice of fruitcake, or a big bowl of popcorn and your favourite holiday movie!

12. Boxing day – Boxing Rock’s Fisticuffs Barrel-Aged Brett Saison – the ‘day after’ deserves a special beer! This beautifully barrel-aged Brett Saison is a fine sipping beer, offering smooth and delicious characteristics of oak and stone fruit.

Purposely leaving the ‘big’ moment out (Christmas dinner) we think there’s just too many perfect Christmas dinner beer pairings to choose just one! Cheers to the perfect holiday season full of perfect holiday moments!

- Sheila Bird is a beer sommelier who loves to celebrate local food and drink wherever she travels!  She loves to create perfect, engaging local food and drink adventures, and especially looks forward to her beer pairings during the holidays with her family in front of the fire in her 100-year old house on the ocean on the South Shore of Nova Scotia.

Fall is a time of change, the leaves turn, the thermostat gets turned up, the comfort foods come out and sweaters go on. The lightness of spring, the refreshing drops of summer are of the past as fall calls for warmer, more robust fare.

At Liquid Assets this means new products hit the shelves and old ones take on new roles. Light and refreshing fruit-forward beers make room for seasonal favourites such as Pumpkin Spiced Ale from Propeller made from Howard Dill’s world-famous pumpkins from Windsor Nova Scotia and seasonal spices. As they say, Pumpkin Pie in a glass. Porters and Stouts come into their own on the forthcoming chilly nights. Lunn’s Anvil Porter with roasty notes, chocolate and dark fruit or Roof Hound Handsome Devil Milk Stout with bold and roasted coffee notes will warm your toes.

Or, perhaps, make it wine time for that final BBQ of the season. Blomidon or Grand Pre Baco Noir would enhance any BBQ fare, or make a pizza and football game that much better. At the dinner table and for the holiday celebrations the wonderful wines of Nova Scotia cannot be forgotten. With Thanksgiving around the corner, Benjamin Bridge Cabernet Franc or Gaspereau Muscat are worthy of any turkey. Lightfoot & Wolfville or Planter’s Ridge Chardonnay would enhance and pair wonderfully with a starter of butternut squash soup. A toast to any event would be that much better with sparkling wine from L’Acadie Vineyards, Benjamin Bridge, Avondale Sky or Lightfoot & Wolfville. All use the Methode Classique and have mastered their own, unique styles.

Fall is a great time to try something new or something new to you. Our Nova Scotian beers and wines are unique and exciting. Give them a try and find your favourites.

Wallace Fraser
Sommelier, Sales, Liquid Assets NS

Introduction to Bartending Instructor for the Halifax Continuing Education Dept. 1985-2000
Wine Introduction Instructor for the Halifax Continuing Education Dept. 1992- 2000

Honorary Harvestor Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2000

Graduate of the International Sommelier Program 2001

Co-Founder and past President of the Association of Sommeliers of the Atlantic Provinces (now CAPS Atlantic)

Diploma in Food and Wine Dynamics from the Culinary Institute of America in Napa 2003

Ours is a curious industry. What can be a detrimental threat to winemakers is embraced by brewers. Someone's waste product is the base for someone else's award-winning product.

Let's look at Brettanomyces, (Bre-TAN-o-My-cees) a non-spore forming yeast, the name of which literally means British Fungus. A small amount in wine (strains are often moved about by every genetics student's friend, the Drosophila fruit fly) can lend an interesting note, but overall, Brett in wine is considered to cause faults in the wine such as metallic tastes or off-putting aromas. But in brewing beer, especially Belgian, Farmhouse, Sours and Saison styles, Brett can lead to flavours like pineapple, citrus, strawberry, cloves, guava, horse-blanket (yes, horse-blanket) and a je ne sais quois funk that can be a true taste delight.

Some Brett-fermented beers are made fairly quickly, others are well-suited to barrel ageing. Just like any type of beer, you need to experiment with flavour profiles until you find the ones that suit your fancy. (I don't love sours, but a good Farmhouse or Saison - yum yum!)

Entire businesses exist to provide reliable yeast strains to both craft brewers and home brewers, and Brett yeasts are available from Canadian firms such as Escarpment Labs in Guelph, ON. 

There are different strains of Brett commonly used in brewing. As Beer Advocate tells us, some more common ones are:

"Brettanomyces Anomalous: Also known as the “Stout” strain of Brett, this was reputedly isolated from a British brewery. Named for an odd near-inability to ferment maltose, use of this strain as an accentuating character is normal. Aromatics are subtle, but fruity tones, especially pineapple, announce its presence.

B. Bruxellensis: Isolated from native cultures of the Senne River valley near Brussels, this is the workhorse-Brett found in so many Belgian ales. The horsey and barnyard characters of the strain are not as pronounced as the closely related B. Lambicus. Poor fermentations with B. Bruxellensis can produce medicinal and rubbery aromatics instead of the more pleasant earthy characters. 

B. Claussenii: A number of sources claim that Claussenii and Anomalous are the same strain. Both were isolated from British breweries, but enough brewers swear there is a difference, so we will treat them differently. As more brewers play with wild ales...expect that they will use B. Claussenii more and more due to the user-friendly aroma—high on fruit and low on horsey funk.

B. Lambicus: The macho Brett. Lambicus defines all that is good and funky from these wild yeast. Big earthy, spicy, smoky, horsey flavours and aromas dominate Lambics and Flemish sour ales. Slow to develop, this strain needs time to produce fruit leather notes and acidity. Works best in conjunction with other yeast and bacteria and in an acidic environment."

Knowledgeable local brewers are culturing their own 'house strains' of Brett and other yeasts, too, putting a unique spin on the flavours in their beers. Big Spruce Brewing and Roof Hound Brewing are two such examples.

And, as will happen, brewers will occasionally collaborate on Brett-fermented Saisons aged in wine barrels or even with wine grapes in the mix, because a little funk in your wine-brewed beer can be a very good thing! If this is your jam, watch for brews such as First Crush Saison from Lazy Bear Brewing, the new Fisticuffs from Boxing Rock Brewing, and later this year North Brewing's always anticipated Saison collaboration with Benjamin Bridge Winery.

Hazy, fruity, funky, and not necessarily hoppy, beers brewed with Brett are coming on strong in the local beer industry. Unique beers are also welcome holiday gifts (plus they don't need to be washed or dusted!) Find some #NSCraftBeer on our online store.