The city of Saskatoon is home to about 273,000 people in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It’s surrounded in all directions by rich farmland. Agriculture is such a fundamental part of Saskatoon’s economy and culture that the University of Saskatchewan has a research farm within its city limits. Saskatonians appreciate the fruits of the land.
Barb Stefanyshyn-Cote and John Cote knew that making something tied to the land and sold directly by them would resonate with local consumers in Saskatoon. A distillery was something of a leap for the married couple—both of them professional agrologists, they owned a farm farther north. As professionals who had worked with other farmers and seen farming around the world, they were attuned to agriculture as a business. They knew that for their own business to survive, they either had to get much larger or do something completely different.
So, they did something that many consider sacrilege: They sold the family farm.
The couple then bought the property that is now Black Fox Farm and Distillery, established in 2015 on 80 acres just a few minutes southwest of Saskatoon’s city limits. Here, they grow triticale—pronounced “trih-tuh-KAY-lee,” it’s a sturdy wheat-rye hybrid—and make whiskey from it.
To keep the soil productive, Black Fox has land-swap arrangements with other nearby farmers; they rotate crops on the Black Fox farm so that Stefanyshyn-Cote and Cote can produce the triticale they need every year.
Farming for Flavor
Black Fox’s primary product is triticale whiskey, sold under the SE Eleven brand—Black Fox is located in the southeast quarter of Section 11, Township 36.
While many distilleries make gin for cash flow while whiskey ages, Black Farm makes gin—marketed under the Black Fox brand—only as a co-product to their whiskey. When the distillate does not meet Black Fox’s quality standards for whiskey, they set it aside to distill again for gin.
“We grow 95 percent of the ingredients we use in our spirits,” Stefanyshyn-Cote says. They chose triticale for a pragmatic reason: It’s hardy and less likely to fail as a crop.
“Every year, it is different, but just as there are vintages in fine wines, we embrace these differences,” Cote says. “Each bottle has a coin on it, bearing a serial number that consumers can enter into our website to learn all of the details of that particular bottle of whiskey.”
They brew their wash with unmalted triticale, getting starch conversion via exogenous enzymes. “Get to know and love your enzymes,” Cote says. As a wheat-rye hybrid, triticale has a lot of gummy beta-glucans—less than in rye, however, while triticale also offers better extract than rye. Besides aiding conversion, enzymes can ease the lauter.
Black Fox wants that triticale as-is. “We are all about the grain,” Cote says. “The grain is our story, so we don’t want the flavor of malting. We want the flavor of the grain.”
That priority on the grain’s character also changes how they view their own farming. “As farmers, we got paid a commodity price by the ton of our production,” Cote says. “Under that model, farmers want to maximize yield per acre, to maximize revenue. But now that we make whiskey, we are trying to maximize flavor per acre. In terms of starch, we get a lower yield from triticale than we would from wheat or barley, but we get more flavor. And we make some agricultural decisions that may result in a lower yield of triticale, but better flavor.”
There are three SE Eleven products: the single-barrel Single Grain Whisky flagship, the Cask Finish Whisky special releases, and the annual Blended Whisky—a “blend of the best” vatting of their favorite single-barrel releases, limited to 500 bottles. They test casks at various dilutions and bottle the whiskey at an optimum ABV for that cask—typically between 47 and 49 percent ABV.
Embracing the Extremes
Black Fox leans heavily into the idea of terroir. Not only do they track and disclose the location of each bottle’s grain, but they also age all the casks outdoors, where they’re exposed to sometimes harsh Saskatchewan temperatures. (Last year, for example, Saskatoon ranged from an average low of –2°F/–19°C in January to an average high of 77°F/25°C in July.) Stefanyshyn-Cote prefers to say that the maturation occurs “under the watchful eye of Mother Nature and Jack Frost.”
Cote adds: “We think we are the last distillery on Earth doing this.”
They aim to learn from the endeavor. Black Fox has partnered with the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) to track weather and study how it affects the aging of the whiskey. By working with the SRC, Black Fox hopes to understand more of the science behind their unique outdoor maturation—knowledge that can only add to the terroir-driven story.
To demonstrate the extremes: Black Fox’s coldest recorded temperature is –44°F (–42°C), while the highest is 104°F (40°C). Within a day, the temperature can swing as much as 36°F (20°C). Those variances make the casks “breathe,” of course, but Black Fox has found that the more extreme swings create a small vacuum in the barrel—and that the vacuum pulls more whiskey out of the wood, adding oak flavor more quickly.
So far, they have relied on West Virginia oak for their barrels, but Black Fox is currently seasoning Canadian-sourced oak, hoping to make their own barrels starting in 2025.
Environmental Stewardship
Selling whiskey by telling the story of its land is neatly compatible with an emphasis on sustainable practices.
Growing 95 percent of their own ingredients not only showcases the flavor of the land; it also means less transportation. Besides getting the grain-driven flavor they want, committing to unmalted triticale means less trucking, less water use, less energy to heat the kiln. Black Fox harvests the triticale and makes whiskey from its raw form—all there on the farm.
Black Fox also grows small amounts of other grains for use in special whiskeys, and they reserve about 10 acres to grow ingredients for their gins, including raspberries, haskap berries, cucumbers, mint, and orris root. “Anything we can grow, we do,” Stefanyshyn-Cote says. Interestingly, they find that the local juniper berries are too strong, so that’s a key gin ingredient that they source from elsewhere.
The distillery uses use only the farm’s own water, and they capture and use all its solid waste on the farm. “We have no waste stream,” Cote says.
Telling Their Story, Abroad
Despite its commitment to the local market, Black Fox has exported its whiskeys to Britain, China, Denmark, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates. The “local” angle has less cachet overseas, so the marketing focuses more on quality and sustainability. “These are messages that resonate around the world,” Stefanyshyn-Cote says.
To other craft distilleries interested in export, Stefanyshyn-Cote has advice: “Work with the trade commissions,” she says. “They are another voice for you, and they are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to opportunities abroad.” Black Fox takes advantage of available export and research grants, but Cote and Stefanyshyn-Cote consider these to be “gravy.”
“Don’t do something just for the grants,” Cote says.
“We have really good products that are unique,” Stefanyshyn-Cote says. “Then it’s just a matter of telling your story. We cannot compete on price or volume. If we did, people wouldn’t trust our local story. You have to create something that is unique.”