MONTREAL—Any normal jobs that Nicolas Duvernois had growing up, he said, left him feeling “like a lion trapped in a cage.”

A modern-day Duddy Kravitz, he schemed as a teenager about making his fortune in ties after reading that one-billion men put on a neckpiece to go to work each day. That youthful spark soon fizzled. Applications to business school were rejected. It was ultimately a doomed Montreal restaurant venture launched in his early 20s with four pals that planted a seed which has put Duvernois in the unlikely position of being among the world’s top vodka producers.

Duvernois placed the weekly drink orders. Two cases of red wine, one case of white and eight or nine bottles of vodka. It was a ratio that made him marvel before realizing the clear liquor’s ubiquity in mixed drinks, martinis, cosmopolitans or good old Russian-style shots. Thus began Duvernois’ search for a quality local vodka and his discovery of a gap in the market he is now seeking to fill.

“I knew nothing about vodka, but I knew that the better the water, the better the vodka,” he said in an interview. “In Quebec we’re supposed to have the world’s best water, so how come no one makes vodka?”

Duvernois quit the restaurant business in 2006 and took a night job cleaning floors at a Montreal children’s hospital in order to dedicate his days to his spirit of choice.

Two years later he gathered together his girlfriend, his vodka-loving lawyer and the master distiller for a tasting of the drink, which combines Quebec-grown corn and spring water from north of Quebec City, in a recipe that is known known as PUR Vodka.

“It tasted like purity. It’s hard to explain because vodka is all about subtleties but when we tasted it everybody was silent in the room,” he said. “It tasted like what we wanted.”

Duvernois knew that he liked his product, which he says is marketed toward the higher-end connoisseur. But he knew that proximity and intense focus can cloud one’s objectivity. He also knew that friends make for bad critics. So in August 2009 Duvernois sent off a few bottles to a competition in London, England to try his hand against the Belvederes, the Stolichnayas and the others marks considered to be among the world’s best.

He had long forgotten about it by the Tuesday morning in December when he received a telephone call while out walking his dog. On the line was a woman with a British accent informing him he had won double gold in the annual Vodka Masters competition. Duvernois hadn’t sold a single bottle to a paying customer, but he had been ranked among the best.

The lion in the cage had become the lunatic in the asylum.

“All day I was on a natural high but it was back to reality at three o’clock when I had to leave for the hospital. I was never that happy cleaning floors as I was that night,” he said. “I didn’t tell them at the hospital because if I had they would have taken me to psychiatry because if you have the world’s best vodka and you’re cleaning floors there’s a problem.”

In fact, the hospital gig continued for another three years in order to finance his company. Still to come was more than a year waiting for authorization, tests and wide-scale distribution by the provincial alcohol regulator, Société des alcools du Québec.

Another two dozen awards have been bestowed on PUR Vodka since that first prize, including the announcement this week Duvernois’ company had won Masters recognition in the micro-distillery category in the 2013 Vodka Masters’ competition.

The business is following closely behind the prizes.

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Earlier this month, Duvernois said he made contact the LCBO, and hopes to get his bottles on liquor store shelves and in Ontario restaurants by early next year. A spokesperson for the LCBO would only say it has made no commitment so far to pick up the award-winning vodka.

“My dad always said, ‘If you’re not strong in your own country, you won’t be able to succeed anywhere else,’” he said.

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