Fermentation trail putting P.E.I. craft alcohol producers on the map

A community of craft alcohol producers in Queens County is banding together to raise awareness about their local products.  

Five different producers have created the 5/15 Fermentation Trail, a way for tourists and locals alike to discover beer, wine, cider, mead and spirits produced near Charlottetown, with a 15-minute drive between each location.  

"I like to use the word cross-pollinate," said Charles Lipnicki, owner of Island Honey Wine Company with his wife, Laura.

"So people come to visit us at the meadery and you know that for sure they're going to enjoy seeing some of the other wonderful products that are being made in the Island."  

The trail is designed to begin at the meadery in Wheatley River, then continues south to Deep Roots Distillery in Warren Grove, then on to Cornwall and the Village Green Brewery. The last two stops are Matos Winery in St. Catherines, near Long Creek, and Riverdale Orchard Cidery in Bonshaw. 

"All the people that are doing this, they're all really nice people and they have beautiful places to visit," Lipnicki said. 

"It just seemed like a natural thing to get together and collaborate, to put something in place, to get everybody moving around." 

I just hope that this gives everybody a little more volume and sales so that they can continue to grow and prosper.— Charles Lipnicki, Island Honey Wine Company

The producers created a trail map and a passport that can be stamped at each location. If you visit all five, your name gets entered into a monthly draw for a gift basket. 

Lipnicki, who opened Island Honey Wine in 2017, said the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses like his made this a great time to launch the trail. 

"We've all gone through some very lean times … anything we can do to help cover lost ground is going to help us get back on our feet and be strong for the years ahead."

Lipnicki first had the idea for the trail, and his fellow producers were keen to get on board. 

"We thought it was a great way to … encourage people to get out and visit the five different businesses," said Mike Beamish, who owns Deep Roots Distillery with his wife Carol. 

Beamish stressed that the community of craft alcohol producers on P.E.I. is small and everyone works together. 

"We're all small producers, and [when] we're looking to buy some equipment or some supplies, we generally try to talk to each other to see who's ordering from where so we can tap into it," he said. 

"We have a pretty good network of, amongst the producers … collaborating and sharing."

The trail launched near the end of June, and both Beamish and Lipnicki said quite a few of their July visitors had picked up passports and were aiming to complete it.  

"The comments that we get back from people, especially if they visited a few others first, is they're quite impressed with the industry in total throughout the Island," said Beamish.  

"Anybody that came through the door with the fermentation trail passport underway was very excited about it," said Lipnicki. 

"And they all said, 'What a great idea. We're having a lot of fun visiting these places.'" 

Bryan Carver has also seen people coming into his Village Green Brewery in Cornwall with the trail passport. 

"It's nice to have people come through and talk about their experiences at each spot that they've had, and it's a real cool little thing that we kind of have going on," said Carver.

Village Green has been open since October 2020, and Carver is grateful for the extra publicity the trail brings. 

"It's been a nice little bump," he said. 

"We kind of operate as a community pub where we want people to come in and sit down and have a chat and have a pint of beer. But typically with the trail we'll have people come in and just have … one or two little samples, like a small pour of beer, and then they'll carry on because they're heading somewhere else." 

Carver has been involved in brewing on P.E.I. for years. 

"When I first started working in the craft alcohol sector, I guess you could say, was at the Gahan House when we first started bottling beer. So back then it was just the one brewery on the island," said Carver. 

Compare that to 2021, with at least nine P.E.I. craft breweries in operation, from Ellerslie to Montague. 

"There's always new ones coming online every year too. So it's really interesting," Carver said.

There's also been a lot of growth in the rest of the craft alcohol market, said Beamish. 

"The Island should be proud of all the innovations and the uniqueness that's coming out of a lot of the producers," he said. 

Beamish said he hopes the fermentation trail will see a lot of success this year, and could even  be expanded across P.E.I. in future years. 

Lipnicki agreed that though P.E.I. has typically flown under the radar as a craft alcohol destination, that should change. 

"We don't blow our own horn loud enough," he said. 

"I'd just like to see [craft beverages] be something people can count on when they come to Prince Edward Island. They know it as the food island, but now they're going to know it as the food and beverage island."

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