LUNENBURG - A popular item among tourists visiting the South Shore is a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Lunenburg - a nice little drinking town with a fishing problem."

 While that may be a tongue-in-cheek reflection on the bygone days of wooden ships and iron men when "demon" rum was the beverage of choice on the town's waterfront, it now has taken on a whole new twist thanks to the efforts of Lynne MacKay and Pierre Guevremont.

 This past summer, the couple purchased the former Walters Blacksmith Shop on Montague Street with the intention of turning it into what is believed to be the first venue in Lunenburg's history that produces legally distilled spirits.

 The idea to open such a facility first came to Mr. Guevremont when he read a story about artisan distilleries in enRoute magazine.

 "It's really a phenomenon that's happening in the U.S.," he explains. "I brought it home to Lynne and said, 'Hey, this kind of meets all our needs.' One, it's hands on, it's not an enterprise we have any ambition to grow into any kind of monolithic enterprise, and it's very much handcrafted, which was the criteria. And it was something we could experiment with and play with and get to live in a marvelous environment."

 The couple, who resided in Halifax for five years after moving from Ontario, made their first Lunenburg connection last January when Ms MacKay visited the town on other business and happened to see the former blacksmith's shop was for sale.

 "We'd taken the [distilling] courses, we knew we were interested and we were looking for a venue," she recalls. "I remember sitting in the parking lot across the way, I phoned Pierre and I said, 'You're not going to believe what I'm looking at.'"

 At the time the property was priced a bit higher than what they wanted to invest, however several months later they received a call from their realtor informing them the price had been reduced and a deal was struck.

 So came about the birth of Ironworks Distillery, a facility where Ms MacKay and Mr. Guevremont have already started production of a variety of distilled spirits, including apple-base vodka, brandy, various liquors and of course, rum.

 "The minute we saw this place, we saw the beautiful sight lines for downtown, we saw the perfect location in the corner there for the big, copper, German still that is coming in January, and we thought, 'Gee, what perfect use for this building,'" Mr. Guevremont says.

 That new wood-fired apparatus will complement a smaller still the couple currently have in use, and will be set up in the rear of the blacksmith shop where the larger of the two forges was previously located.

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 The front section of the shop will retain the ambiance and the history of the smaller forge and is currently being converted to retail space where the bulk of the company's product will be sold.

 "We hope to have some products in the NSLC [Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation] so we can distribute them more widely," he explains. "But the margins are better if we sell it ourselves, plus we have this marvelous venue to do so."

 While initially, the couple's product focus was on making vodka, Mr. Guevremont says, "People kept knocking on the door saying, 'You're making rum, right?'

 "So after the 450th person said [that], we decided we're going to make rum."

 "We took the hint," Ms MacKay laughs. "The history of rum, what was going on with rum running, the ships … there's so much folklore with rum. Once we went down that road, it was really quite inviting."

 While the creation of Ironworks Distillery is a dream come true for the couple, they have no plans on changing their game plan and challenging the high rollers of the industry.

 "It isn't going to be a production facility big time, because there is no need in the world for any more of those," Mr. Guevremont says. "But rather, it will be dependent upon what we're interested in, what we want to play with and so on. We're fascinated by making alcoholic beverages from the produce of Nova Scotia. That's our primary focus."

posted on 12/29/09