I hardly ever drink cocktails. After my first choice of wine or beer, I’m more likely to have a straight spirit, a bourbon or an amaro, rather than a cocktail. It isn’t because I don’t enjoy them.

It’s simply a personal preference, along with the fact that throughout my restaurant career, I never did get too deep into the spirits or mixology side of things.

It’s because of this that I rarely speak of cocktails and spirits in this column. Wine, and the occasional beer, are certainly more my professional beat, and I prefer to leave deep discussion and coverage of the cocktail-and-spirit scene to those with greater experience. I do receive invites to spirit world launches and events, and I almost always decline them, but a recent opportunity piqued my interest.

Brian Ellison, the founder of Wisconsin’s Death’s Door Spirits, was in Vancouver a couple weeks back to meet and greet some industry folks, hosting a dinner at Juniper (185 Keefer Street), the highlight being Juniper barman Shaun Layton pairing Death’s-Door-gin-based cocktails alongside a few courses.

It was the food-pairing component that intrigued me as well as a casual appreciation of gin (likely punctuated by the recent sunny summer weather). As it turned out, I quickly became enamoured with the stuff.

Although the distillery is located in Middleton, Wisconsin (about an hour-and-a-half drive west of Milwaukee), the soul of Death’s Door is situated on Washington Island, about five hours north, just off the coast in Lake Michigan. Up until the 1970s, the 55-square-kilometre island was a hub for independent potato farmers; when corporate interests swept through that industry, much of the island’s agriculture trade was abandoned.

In 2005, Ellison and a handful of partners initiated a bit of an agricultural renaissance there, planting wheat for what was to become Death’s Door Spirits. That wheat, along with wild juniper berries grown on the island, is combined with Wisconsin barley, coriander, and fennel to make Death’s Door gin.

I find it’s the simple trio of botanicals—the juniper, coriander, and fennel—that gives the gin its distinctiveness; you really taste each component. For context, a gin like Bombay incorporates 10 different botanicals, while Hendrick’s uses a dozen.

Behind the bar, Layton shook and stirred hit after hit for the small crowd, and I was impressed with how well the cocktails worked with the food, all of them bright and cheery combos. His Wisco G & T was a simple and clean assembly of Death’s Door gin, fennel, apple, angostura bitters, and Fever Tree Indian Tonic, and it totally jibed with Juniper chef Sarah Stewart’s breezy salad combo of summer lettuces with buttermilk-fried onions, tarragon, pickled baby beets, and double-smoked bacon.

A Washington Fizz—comprising of Death’s Door gin, a quince-based drinking vinegar, elderflower, lime, and (Vancouver-based) Dickie’s ginger beer—amiably greeted Stewart’s house-made fennel-chili pork sausage with apple and kohlrabi sauerkraut.

With wine pairing, I always think to match flavour components as if they were actual ingredients in a dish. It’s an easy rule of thumb: a citrusy Chablis with oysters, where it acts as a squeeze of lemon, or a berry-driven rosé with turkey, as its cranberry sauce. You can see in the above cocktail pairings how all of those ingredients would fold together well. I’ve found myself a new appreciation for gin; consequently, my summer may see it appear as a bit of a theme.

You can buy Death’s Door gin at private liquor stores like Legacy Liquor Store in Olympic Village, Firefly on Cambie Street, and High Point on East Hastings Street, priced between $50 and $55. Better yet, go visit Layton at Juniper for more tales of Death’s Door (he recently visited the distillery) and let him craft you something delicious.

And now for something completely different.

This past weekend, I was heading to a friend’s barbecue in the midst of a couple of alcohol-free days. Yes, every so often it happens! I was wandering Olympic Village while mulling over what to bring and thought to pop into Legacy Liquor Store on the off chance they had a recommendation of a nonalcoholic beer that actually tasted like, you know, beer.

Their recommendation was Erdinger Weissbier Alkoholfrei out of Germany ($2.63 for a 500-millilitre bottle), and I gotta say that it’s by far the best-quality and tastiest booze-free beer I’ve tried. Flavourwise, it’s the closest to the real thing I’ve known, a touch hazy from the wheat component (just like a true Hefeweizen), with a hint of hoppy bitterness. I highly recommend it, should there be a time and a place you find yourself inclined. It’s also available downtown, both at Viti Wine and Lager and at Denman Beer Wine and Spirits.

Next week, a return to our regular programming.