Sons of Vancouver is a Canadian micro-distillery producing big, flavourful, genre-busting rye whiskies.

Pot distillation is superior to column distillation. Old whisky is better than young. Yeast is just yeast, oak is just oak, and rye is always peppery and spicy.

Imagine this mythical whisky wisdom scribbled on an imaginary scrap of cardboard box… then chucked in the bin by a small craft distillery located in the foggy, forested environs of North Vancouver on Canada’s west coast. “We're thinking outside the box, of a box we built for ourselves,” laughs James Lester, founder of Sons of Vancouver, one of the early micro-distilleries that opened in British Columbia a decade ago.

From tide to table, distilleries are bottling sips from the sea and reawakening our connection to water.

There’s a growing movement in the spirits world around ‘merroir’. This term, borrowed from oyster farming, is quietly transforming how we understand and enjoy flavour on a new level. Call it the ocean’s answer to terroir — this portmanteau of mer (meaning sea) and terroir (sense of place) speaks to the way coastal environments shape taste, aroma, and character in everything from gin to whisky to salt-kissed cocktail bitters.

A new chapter is emerging for smoky whiskies beyond peat.