What People Drink in Canada: Quebec Traditions and Indigenous Ingredients

Canada’s drinking traditions are shaped by cold winters, boreal forests, and a short, intense growing season. In Québec, orchards and maple stands meet a legacy of French-influenced craftsmanship and seasonal feasts.

Across Indigenous foodways, local berries, wild botanicals, and community gatherings inform what’s poured, while modern producers adapt ancestral ingredients. Expect forest aromatics, concentrated sweetness, and drinks made for winter tables and festivals.

Ice cider (cidre de glace) is a dessert-style apple wine created by fermenting highly concentrated must from naturally frozen fruit. Québec producers use cryoconcentration (freezing pressed juice) or cryoextraction (pressing apples harvested at subzero temperatures), often at −8°C or colder. The result ferments slowly in stainless steel and sometimes matures in neutral vessels. Alcohol typically ranges from 9–13% ABV with residual sugar balanced by bright acidity.

Expect aromas of baked apple, quince, honey, and citrus zest, with a silky palate and a clean, cold-climate finish. Born in the Eastern Townships and Montérégie and recognized under a protected indication in Québec, it’s poured as an apéritif or with foie gras, cheddar, and apple desserts. Taste it at orchard cider houses around Dunham or at urban bars in Montreal, especially in winter and harvest season when producers release new vintages.

Spruce beer in Québec ranges from historical, lightly hopped ales to modern craft interpretations infused with spring spruce tips. Traditionally, brewers used young spruce growth and molasses for fermentable sugars; today, malted barley provides the base, while fresh tips add vitamin-rich aromatics once prized by sailors and settlers. Most versions sit around 5–7% ABV and ferment like standard ale, with spruce added late in the boil or as a post-fermentation infusion.

The flavor is resinous and citrusy, with piney aroma, herbal bitterness, and a brisk, drying finish that pairs with smoked fish or game. Though nonalcoholic “bière d’épinette” sodas exist, craft breweries in Montreal and beyond typically release alcoholic spruce ales in late spring when tips are lime-green and tender. You’ll also find winter seasonals using darker malts and warming spice, poured at pubs and taprooms for a distinctly forest-forward pint.

Caribou is a festive Québecois punch blending red wine with a measure of strong spirits—often whisky, brandy, or vodka—plus maple syrup or sugar and winter spices. While recipes vary, typical strength ends up near fortified-wine territory, roughly 14–20% ABV depending on the ratio. It’s an assembled drink rather than a fermented style: the base wine is warmed with spices, sweetened, then strengthened with liquor for a cold-weather crowd-pleaser.

Legend links the name to fur-trade lore, but its modern identity is inseparable from the Québec Winter Carnival. In Quebec City, carnival-goers sip it hot from kiosks or insulated cups while parading past ice sculptures and snowy streets. Caribou tastes mulled and vinous—think dark berry, clove, orange peel, and a maple roundness—with enough spirit heat to cut through subzero nights. It’s equally at home après-ski or at cabin parties across the province.

Icewine is made from grapes that freeze naturally on the vine, then are pressed while still frozen to yield a syrupy must with high sugar and acidity. In Canada, harvest typically occurs at −8°C or colder, and varietals like Vidal, Riesling, and Cabernet Franc dominate. Fermentation is deliberately slow and cool; the finished wine usually lands between 9–13% ABV with concentrated residual sugar and piercing acidity for balance.

Expect aromas of apricot, peach, lychee, and honey, with a viscous texture and long, luminous finish. You can taste benchmark examples in Niagara-on-the-Lake and Kelowna, as well as in pockets of Québec where winters are reliably cold. Icewine is poured in small glasses after dinner, with blue cheese or fruit tarts, or used sparingly in cocktails for aromatic lift. It’s a showcase for Canada’s deep-freeze climate and meticulous harvest timing.

Maple is more than a syrup—Québec producers ferment it into wines and distill it into acerum, a maple-based spirit recognized by regional distillers. Maple wine (vin d’érable) is made by fermenting diluted syrup or concentrated sap to 10–14% ABV, sometimes blended with honey to create acerglyn (a maple mead). Acerum begins with a maple wash fermented like a sugarcane or molasses spirit, then distilled—often in pot stills—to around 40–43% ABV and sometimes aged in oak.

Maple wines are amber-gold, with aromas of caramel, vanilla, and forest florals, tasting off-dry to sweet yet structured by acidity. Acerum leans toward toffee, toasted wood, and warm spice, ideal for sipping neat or mixing with citrus and bitters. Spring sugar-shack season near Montreal and Quebec City is a natural time to explore these bottles, though distillery tasting rooms pour year-round. Pair with aged cheddar, tourtière, or maple-glazed ham.

Saguenay–Lac‑Saint‑Jean is “bleuet” country, home to abundant wild lowbush blueberries. Wineries crush and ferment the fruit much like grapes, fermenting in stainless steel and sometimes barrel-aging to build texture. Finished strengths generally sit around 11–13% ABV. Styles range from dry to off-dry, with producers managing tannin from skins and seeds to keep the palate sleek and food-friendly.

Aromas skew to ripe blueberry, violet, and gentle baking spice, with a vivid purple hue and fresh, berry-skin bite. It’s a natural match for local cheeses, tourtière, and chocolate desserts. Visitors can follow cycling routes around the lake, stopping in Alma for tasting flights and seasonal events during late-summer harvest. Served lightly chilled, blueberry wine captures northern brightness and the region’s identity in the glass.

Many Indigenous peoples on the northern Plains historically relied on berries such as saskatoon (Amelanchier alnifolia) and chokecherry for foodways; alcohol production, however, was not widespread before colonization. Today, some Indigenous-owned or community-connected producers craft small-batch berry wines and meads that center these ancestral ingredients while using modern fermentation. Typical strengths run 10–13% ABV, with stainless-steel fermentations preserving fresh fruit character and occasional oak contact for roundness.

Saskatoon berry wine offers notes of blueberry, almond-like kernels, and plum, while chokecherry leans tart, with cherry skin and wild herb tones. Bottles appear at farmers’ markets, festivals, and urban tasting rooms in cities such as Saskatoon, always with respect for local regulations and the reality that some communities maintain alcohol restrictions. These drinks often accompany community meals, game dishes, or bannock-based plates, connecting contemporary craftsmanship with deep-rooted prairie ingredients.