GOLD
Best Light Lager // Hüftgold Pilsner
Best Fruit Beer // Vélo Hazy APA with Lemon Juice
Best Sour Ale // Nectarous Dry Hopped Sour
Best Specialty IPA // Juxtapose Wild IPA
Best Collab Beer // Good News Everyone!
Best Food Program
SILVER
Best Belgian-Style Ale // Triplicity
Belgian-Style Tripel
Best West Coast IPA // Greg IPA
There are a lot of good breweries in British Columbia and a handful of great ones, but only a very rare few occupy the highest echelon where Four Winds resides. After opening in 2013, this family-run brewery quickly made a name for itself, both because of the quality of its beers as well as the company’s consistently classy and eye-catching branding. The growing beer lineup, as designed by Brent Mills, often included trailblazers (Nectarous) or trendsetters (Juxtapose).
As the brewery expanded, the Mills family always seemed to put great thought into each step. When they added a kitchen to their tasting room, the famous tacos themselves became a reason to travel to Delta. They have also faced great adversity, including the sudden death of Greg Mills, father of the siblings who created the brewery, as well as major setbacks to their plans to open a second brewery as part of the Southlands development in Tsawwassen—a project that is fortunately back on track.
Over the years, the accolades have poured in: Brewery of the Year at the 2015 Canadian Brewing Awards and Beer of the Year in 2016 (for Nectarous); a silver medal at the World Beer Cup; many, many BC Beer Awards and, of course, too many Growlies to count. This year, Four Wind’s haul includes eight awards in total, including six first place finishes. Congratulations!
—Joe Wiebe