TORONTO — In 2024, the grand prize at the Canadian Whisky Awards went to Paradigm Spirits. Its entrant, made with Canadian corn, aged for 19 years in American oak barrels and blended with a splash of Spanish sherry, beat some 200 competitors to be crowned Whisky of the Year. A judge called it “remarkable.”
It was a break for Paradigm, which had opened in an old Kellogg’s factory in London, Ontario, just a few years earlier. The women-owned-and-operated distillery was soon inundated with messages from Canadians across the country eager to buy the award-winning spirit, co-founder Irma Joeveer said.
But there was a problem: Canada’s internal trade barriers. With few exceptions, alcohol producers in one Canadian province are prohibited from selling directly to consumers in another. Vintners in British Columbia, for instance, can often more easily sell their merlots to oenophiles in other countries than within their own.
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