Distillerie Arsenal announces the acquisition of the Distillerie du St. Laurent brand, less than two months after the announcement of the bankruptcy of the Bas-Saint-Laurent company.
The beautiful premises of the Pointe-au-Père distillery, designed by Atelier Pierre Thibault, remain closed, however – it is the stocks and the brand that are at the heart of this transaction. The equipment is also excluded.
“We didn’t want the brand to disappear,” explains François Nolin, co-owner of Distillerie Arsenal, which opened its production facilities on the edge of Charest Boulevard in Quebec City last fall.
The red brick buildings are a reclamation of the former Arsenal Saint-Malo munitions factory. In addition to the stills and barrels of the distillery, there is a restaurant and a shop where you can buy the gins of the Distillerie du St. Laurent.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The Arsenal & Co. restaurant in Quebec, in the Saint-Sauveur district
According to François Nolin, by purchasing this recognized brand, Arsenal wants to build a larger and more credible portfolio, particularly with the SAQ. “It allows us,” he says, “to gain recognition much more quickly as a player capable of having products.”
The Arsenal Distillery is an ambitious project which, in fact, has no alcohol to offer at the moment.
“We just got approval for our labels from the SAQ last week,” says François Nolin, who emphasizes the complexity of the process. The Arsenal project was born three years ago. François Nolin knows the alcohol industry well: he is the founder of the Archibald brewery, sold to Labatt in 2016.
A difficult situation
Arsenal is expanding at a difficult time for Quebec distilleries. According to their own group, two-thirds of small Quebec distilleries are loss-making.
In this context, the bankruptcy of the Distillerie du St. Laurent caused a stir last spring, the company being very respected in the industry.
“From the beginning, St. Laurent was a kind of icon, a model,” confides François Nolin. “Their values, the quality of their products, all the work they did, their manufacturing process: it was something that we respected enormously, that we admired a lot.”
Unsurprisingly then, the gins from the Distillerie du St. Laurent will continue to be produced according to the same recipes, with marine products in particular.