The 7 Best Canadian Gins to Expand Your Bar Horizons

Canadian gin doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves. While the country’s whisky tradition hogs the spotlight, a genuinely impressive cohort of craft distillers has been quietly building one of the more interesting gin scenes in the world, drawing on everything from Arctic-foraged botanicals to Japanese cherry blossoms to cedar shoots pulled straight from the Quebec forest floor. The range here is real, and the quality is high.

The seven Canadian gins below are ranked using The Daily Pour Critics’ Score, an aggregate of house ratings and scores from the most trusted critics across the internet. Ties are broken by editorial judgment, weighing price and accessibility.

7. Shiver Gin

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Shiver Gin comes out of Newfoundland and Labrador, produced by Rock Spirits from a quadruple-distilled corn base, and at around $35 it sits comfortably at the accessible end of this list. The botanical lineup is classic and unfussy: juniper, coriander, citrus and anise, bottled at 40% ABV. What you get in the glass is a clean, no-surprises London dry profile with a bright citrus snap up front and a faint licorice whisper on the finish that keeps things from feeling anonymous. It won’t rewrite your understanding of the category, but for a well-made, everyday-drinking gin from Canada’s Atlantic coast, it punches squarely above its price point.

6. Eau Claire Distillery Parlour Gin

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Alberta’s Eau Claire Distillery Parlour Gin is a London dry with a Prairie detour, built on a barley base and infused with 10 botanicals that include Saskatoon berries and rose hips, two ingredients that immediately set it apart from any gin made east of the Rockies. Priced at about $37.99 and bottled at 40% ABV, it opens with a floral nose that leans more wildflower meadow than perfume counter, then delivers a palate where the Saskatoon berry adds a soft, jammy sweetness that never tips into candy territory. The finish is dry and botanical, exactly what the label promises.

5. Ungava Gin

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Ungava Gin is the one that gets people talking at the bar, mostly because of the color (a vivid natural yellow, courtesy of its Arctic botanicals) but also because of what’s actually in it. Domaine Pinnacle hand-forages six ingredients from northern Quebec, including Nordic juniper, wild rose hip, Labrador tea, crowberry and cloudberry, then steeps them for five weeks before bottling at 43.1% ABV. The nose is citrus-forward with a brightness that feels almost tart, while the palate layers in a subtle herbal spice that reads more like a walk through boreal scrubland than anything you’d find on a standard botanical spec sheet. At around $50, it’s a conversation piece that also happens to taste good.

4. Sheringham Kazuki Gin

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Sheringham Kazuki Gin is produced on Vancouver Island by Sheringham Distillery, and it may be the most visually evocative gin on this list before you even open the bottle. The botanical bill reads like a collaboration between a Pacific Northwest forager and a Japanese tea ceremony: juniper and coriander anchor the base, while yuzu, grapefruit peel, green tea and Japanese cherry blossoms pull the whole thing sideways in the best possible way. At 43% ABV and approximately $50, the result is a gin where the grapefruit and yuzu arrive first, bright and slightly waxy, before the green tea pulls the finish into something quieter and almost meditative. It’s a springtime gin that works in any season.

3. Black Fox Oaked Gin

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Black Fox Oaked Gin is the wild card here, and deliberately so. Black Fox Farm and Distillery in Saskatoon rests this gin for six to eight months in new American white oak barrels, and the result is something that occupies the blurry, interesting territory between gin and whisky. At 46% ABV and priced at approximately $84, it’s the priciest entry in this lineup, but the oak investment shows. The botanical base is still present underneath, but the wood pushes forward with a smoky, resinous quality and a dry, almost tannic finish that would feel right at home alongside a barrel-aged cocktail program. For anyone who finds standard gin too floral or too light, this is the one to reach for.

2. Gin Thuya

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At around $30, Gin Thuya from Distillerie Fils du Roy is the best value on this list, and possibly the most distinctive gin in the entire roundup. Fils du Roy holds the distinction of being the first distillery in the Acadian region, and it produces Thuya using traditional pot stills, redistilling a corn base with Thuja occidentalis, the young cedar shoots harvested near Saint-Arsène, Quebec, alongside juniper and coriander. The profile is unapologetically forest-forward: think fresh-cut cedar plank, pine resin and a cool, almost mentholated finish that lingers long after the glass is empty. Bottled at a confident 45% ABV, it’s an easy recommendation based on price and quality.

1. Empress 1908 Cucumber Lemon Gin

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Victoria Distillers has built one of the most recognizable gin brands in Canada with the Empress 1908 line, and Empress 1908 Cucumber Lemon Gin may be its most accomplished release yet. The third entry in the series, following the iconic Indigo Gin and the Elderflower Rose, this one draws its inspiration from afternoon tea and delivers on that brief with eight botanicals: juniper, lemon peel, garden cucumber, jasmine and cardamom among them. At 42.5% ABV, the nose is somewhere between a freshly sliced cucumber and a pot of floral loose-leaf tea, and the palate follows with a lemon brightness that keeps everything crisp. The cardamom adds just enough warmth on the finish. It scores a 93 from our critics, the highest mark on this list, and it earns it. A bottle retails for around $32.99, adding affordability to its list of perks.

Canadian gin is having a moment, and this list makes a strong case for why. Whether you start with the forest-floor intensity of Gin Thuya, the tea-ceremony elegance of Kazuki or the top-scoring, afternoon-tea freshness of Empress 1908 Cucumber Lemon, there’s a Canadian gin here that will change how you think about what the category can do.