Julie Shore was in town the other day. She is from Prince Edward Island by way of Florida and North Carolina.

We met a year ago when I and the woman who scrambles my eggs were driving down a back road near Souris while on holidays.

Where there should have been nothing but scrub brush, there was a bright blue building with a neat garden and a handsome wooden sign: Prince Edward Distillery.

You’d have braked, too.

Distilling has a long tradition on the island, not always legal. For example, I may or may not have had a quart of white spirits that may or may not have been bought under the table from a man who may or may not have been . . . never mind.

All gone now.

Julie is legit.

She moved to P.E.I. some years ago. Her mind works in merry ways. Her family, way back, made bourbon. She — astute girl — noticed that the island has an abundance of potatoes; she knew spuds are the stuff of vodka in some parts of the world.

So she got her ducks in a row, and ordered a handsome copper still from Germany — she put it together herself — and she has been making potato vodka, as well as blueberry vodka, and also some very tasty gin, for some time now.

That’s why she was here.

The LCBO has picked up a small consignment of her finest stuff, and so she spent a couple of days charming the mixologists at our better watering holes, and then she organized a hasty tasting for a handful of our wine writers.

I was there, noonish. The writers looked rumpled. I’m betting breakfast for most was coffee, black. Julie put on her brightest smile.

She said, “Less than 2 per cent of the vodkas in the world are made from potatoes. Vodkas made from grain are neutral on the palate; I think of mine as a whisky man’s vodka.”

And so began the pouring, the sipping and the swirling and the spitting, the pursing of the lips and the raising of the eyebrows.

A wag, on trying the vodka said, sotto voce, “I’m getting hints of chive and sour cream.”

One in every crowd.

The vodka is delicious, almost vegetal.

Julie said, “We try to be sustainable. I work with a potato grader. He works with 30 growers. We have a washing facility. And we keep 12 or 15 pigs.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The pigs eat the potato mash; Julie and her partner own an inn, and the mash-fed pigs provide them with bacon and sausages.

She was asked if she peeled her potatoes before fermentation. “At first I did. I had a Hobart peeler. It was messy and it uses a lot of water. I wondered if it made a difference. We made a batch with the skins on. It worked fine. We don’t peel.”

She was asked how many spuds she uses. “One bottle of vodka is 30 lbs. of potatoes. We’re not at capacity yet, but we use 4,500 to 6,000 lbs. of potatoes at a time. I do two or three cooks a week. We use Russet Burbanks — nothing wrong with them at all, except they’re the wrong size.”

For the supermarket, that is.

As for the blueberry vodka, hers is not a plain spirit with flavour added; she buys wild berries, then ferments and distills them.

Oh, paradise.

Here’s my interest: this is intensely local stuff at a time when local is the goal, and I am curious: where is the framboise from Ontario raspberries, the slivovic from our plums, the pear liqueur from our Bartletts?

I’m just asking.

Thirstily.

Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca