Sheringham Distillery’s commitment to sustainability is not just admirable, but crucial to our future. And it’s a vision they hope the craft distilling world will unite behind. Founded by husband-and-wife team Jason and Alayne MacIsaac in 2015 on southern Vancouver Island, the distillery has grown from two spirits to now regularly distilling three flagship gins, a vodka, an akvavit, a whiskey, and coffee, chocolate, and gin liqueurs, each with a West Coast-driven sense of place.
At more than a few of Vancouver’s most award-winning cocktail bars, like the Botanist at Fairmont Pacific Rim, I found Sheringham gins and akvavit in cocktails. Asking each bar manager about their favorite local spirits, Sheringham came up at most of the best bars.
The brand’s signature, medal-winning Seaside Gin captures B.C., from evergreen forest to misty sea, featuring winged kelp harvested near the distillery. It showcases Japanese botanicals like cherry blossom and yuzu peel in the Kazuki Gin, and also makes lower ABV gin liqueurs in rhubarb and lemon flavors. Its akvavit leans toward dill, caraway, anise, and citrus, also with that local winged kelp. All are in bottles embossed with a sailboat, honoring their West Coast spirit nourished by the Pacific.
In their own words, Jason and Alayne tell us about their chef-driven road to distilling, how they have grown their brand, and how their sustainable ethos drives many of their decisions.
Sheringham Distillery
What personally led you into distilling?
Jason: As a chef, I’ve spent more than twenty years mastering the principles of creating balanced flavor profiles in food. The skills needed to find harmony in high-quality ingredients in the kitchen are the same principles that apply to distilling exquisite gin. Every chef has the same ingredients in their pantry, but the skill lies in how they balance each flavor to create a unique outcome. This is the approach I take with our gin. My wife has an incredible business mind and saw a need in the market for a gin that was sippable and approachable. She came to me, interested in how my knowledge as a chef could be applied to distilling in order to create a liquid with a robust, clean flavor profile. I was energized by the possibilities of taking my skills from the kitchen to the still.
Alayne: When Jason and I decided to create Sheringham, we knew our skill sets would complement each other. With my background in marketing and sales, it was crucial for me to be able to identify exactly how we wanted to grow and to find the opportunities that made the most sense for the brand. It’s almost like being a forecaster: knowing where and when your brand will have the most impact and understanding your consumer in order to meet them there. As a family-owned business, we believe in sustainable business practices that prioritize quality while remaining true to our values of authenticity, innovation, and being chef-driven.
Tell us what is unique or specific about your distillery and spirits:
Jason: Sheringham Distillery is on a mission to make the world’s most approachable gin, prioritizing sustainability and quality ingredients with a chef’s approach to distilling. We believe that gin should be sippable, approachable, balanced. We’re on a mission to create a gin that’s an everyday luxury by focusing on high-quality, curated ingredients that complement each other on the rocks or in a cocktail.
Sheringham is a brand with a sense of terroir and sustainability at its core…A percentage of our proceeds go to SeaLegacy, an organization with a mission of creating healthy and abundant oceans through the power of visual storytelling. We are joining the Vancouver Island Green Business Initiative…supporting the initiative by helping them create membership criteria for businesses involved in manufacturing on Vancouver Island. Our plan [is] to be carbon neutral by 2023.
How is your business affected by — and surviving — the shutdowns?
Jason: As a distillery, we were in a unique position during the pandemic that allowed us to support our community. We quickly began making, distributing, and self-delivering hand sanitizers to local businesses and people of our community (keeping our recipes in accordance with Health Canada), while continuing our usual spirit production. We felt really privileged to listen to our community and be able to serve them during such a difficult time.
How does running a distillery in B.C. define and influence what you create?
Jason: Each of our spirits has a story, tied to the terroir where they were created. Our gin is inspired by the West Coast of Canada: rugged and wild with an abundance of good, quality ingredients.
We feel a duty to protect and give back to the land and ocean. Business sustainability is crucial to help our world today and ensure that future generations can also thrive. For our Seaside Gin, we highlight flavors of the ocean, blending sustainably harvested winged kelp with an impeccably balanced botanical profile that comes from juniper, rose, lavender, citrus, coriander, and cardamom. The winged kelp adds brightness, freshness, and salinity to the gin. Harvested from our home on Canada’s West Coast, kelp is one of the most eco-friendly seaweeds known to improve the health of the ocean and our planet. We work with a licensed biologist to ensure that the winged kelp is harvested sustainably.
We knew we were onto something when we entered the World Gin Awards and won the Best Contemporary Gin [for Seaside Gin]. For our Kazuki Gin, we source botanicals locally on Vancouver Island and from Japan, including the only grown-in-Canada green tea from Westholme Tea Farm in Cowichan Valley and Japanese cherry blossoms.
What do you feel are the key elements of growing your brand?
Jason: We created Sheringham because we saw a hole in the market: the opportunity to create the world’s most drinkable spirits. This approach has served us well, and in the seven years since founding Sheringham, we have been on the ground building authentic connections with buyers, retailers, and consumers, sharing our story and highlighting our chef-driven approach to innovation and quality.
[We] continue to create and foster a brand that we built from our home that has earned the respect and accolades from the likes of the World Gin Awards. [We’ve been] building a community that has helped the brand grow into something that is meaningful to so many people and has exceeded even our own expectations.
We have a pretty ambitious growth plan. In 2022, we expanded to the U.S. with a retail footprint in over 15 markets, including California. As we grew, it was important that we found the right distributors that aligned with our ethos and shared a passion for building our brand. In the next two years, we will have expanded our presence in 35 states and 10 countries. It’s important that we scale our business while still keeping sustainability at the forefront.
How do you envision the world of small-batch spirits/craft distilling evolving in the coming years?
Jason: We envision the world of craft distilling evolving to produce more unique and thoughtful innovative spirits that are versatile, timeless, and offer something special. We love to see and taste what other distilleries are creating and putting out in the world. What has always been an inspiration to and a driver for Sheringham is the relationship we have with our community, environment, and where we come from. We are always listening, responding, shifting, and evolving. We hope to see a long-term commitment in the distillation world to protect and replenish our Earth and its resources with the abundance that the environment gives to all of us.
