A locally produced brand of vodka has been pulled from Ontario store shelves after a batch was found to contain more than double the alcohol content listed on bottles.

The batch of Georgian Bay vodka was bottled before it was properly diluted, resulting in an alcohol content of 81 per cent, according to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.

The vodka is labelled as having just 40 per cent alcohol, making the “unintended consumption” of a product that’s twice as strong a danger to the unsuspecting public, said LCBO spokesperson Christine Bujold.

By comparison, once-illegal absinthe has an alcohol content of about 62 per cent, but its labelling means drinkers know the impact of what they are consuming, Bujold said.

Since vodka can be consumed neat, without dilution or mix, the mislabelled batch could hit unsuspecting consumers particularly hard, Bujold said, and “that poses the danger,”

She said the distiller, Toronto-based Georgian Bay Gin Company, is fully cooperating with the LCBO.

Georgian Bay is a small-batch distiller that has won industry awards, including honours last year at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

Company spokesman Denzil Wadds said “the final blend was incorrectly executed” for the batch in question, resulting in 654 bottles of vodka with the higher concentration of alcohol.

“Of that, we know at least 300 are still in the LCBO warehouse and the remainder have been removed from the LCBO shelves,” Wadds said in an email.

“To ensure this never happens again we’ve had the distillery re-write their entire QA [quality assurance] procedures and we’re hiring a third-party quality assurance expert to evaluate the distillery to make sure every step has been taken,” Wadds said.

Wadds said it wasn’t clear when Georgian Bay vodka would be back in the stores.

“Our priority right now is to work with the LCBO to ensure we have all the product off the shelves and the distillery implements all the new safeguards we’ve developed,” Wadds said. “Once we’re all satisfied that the processes are in place will we start talking about restocking.”

The vodka’s high potency was discovered through testing in the LCBO lab after a customer brought back a bottle and raised questions about it, Bujold said.

According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, where the notice was posted, there have been no reported illnesses associated with the product so far.

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The LCBO says the high potency bottles have been removed from store shelves but any customers and licensees who have bottles from the affected batch should return them for a full refund.

With files from Alina Bykova