Dillon’s Small Batch Distillers is situated in Canada’s largest wine region and sources their base fruit for distilling from the wineries that dot the map around their facility. Why? Because making alcohol from wine grapes produces a superior well balanced neutral alcohol from which to make their vodka, gins, bitters and other seasonal spirits.

They also source fresh tender fruit and ingredients from neighbouring farms for their specialty spirits. This isn’t just a story of neighbourly love, or quality, this is also a larger discussion of sustainable environmental practices. Simply, sourcing the largest component of your production from your neighbours saves energy and reduces waste. The reduced carbon footprint from this activity — this philosophy — is massive.

From the get go for Dillon’s as a distiller from wine grapes, it only made perfect sense to develop a vermouth. However it was critical to Geoff Dillon and his father Dr. Peter Dillon that if they did venture into the legacy field of vermouth, it had better be awesome. So after years of trial, tasting, experimenting and tinkering they nailed it.

Now with just a few complicated governmental barriers to get out of the way, their amazing vermouth will be available directly to the public through an agent and hopefully, eventually, the LCBO.

We set out to design a package that was both reflective of the tradition of vermouths but also to appear well rooted within the Dillon’s identity and package system.

We hand illustrated the label art in near entirety before scanning and producing for refinement in the Mac.

The bottle uses 2 ceramic ink colours screened directly to the glass and is hand dipped in wax to finish the cork closure.