Black Fox Farm and Distillery: A Fifth-Generation Saskatoon Couple Building Spirits with Prairie Terroir
How John Cote and Barb Stefanyshyn-Cote turned a South Saskatchewan River Valley grain farm into one of Canada's most decorated on-farm distilleries — home of the World's Best Cask Gin.
May 2, 2026 · By Justin Plosz · Saskatoon, Saskatchewan · Business · 11 min read
The Quick Picture
Black Fox Farm and Distillery sits a few minutes outside Saskatoon, on a working farm in the South Saskatchewan River Valley. It is the project of John Cote and Barb Stefanyshyn-Cote, a husband-and-wife team that are both fifth-generation farmers. They self-describe as "Canada's leading on-farm distillery," and the language is not casual. The distillery is already counted among Canada's most well-known and well-respected craft producers, and its gin programme has been recognised with the title of World's Best Cask Gin.
That headline obscures the more interesting story underneath it. The Cotes are not chefs or sommeliers who decided to make spirits. They are agricultural lifers — alumni of Canada's Outstanding Young Farmers programme, the Canadian Agricultural Lifetime Leadership programme, and Nuffield Canada — who have studied and consulted on five continents. They ran a grain farm in rural Saskatchewan before they ran a distillery, and Black Fox is, in the most literal sense, an extension of that farm.
What that means in practice is that acres of fresh fruit, flowers, and grains are harvested on the same property where they are distilled into whisky, gin, and liqueurs. The farm is also a destination: tasting room, distillery tours, snowshoe trails, U-pick fields, floral workshops, and a winter patio with a heated whisky dome. It is a serious agricultural business that has built a serious experience economy around itself.
Two Fifth-Generation Farmers, One Distillery
John Cote and Barb Stefanyshyn-Cote are both fifth-generation farmers — a credential that gets thrown around loosely in Canadian agriculture but, in their case, is backed by a documented record of leadership in the sector. They are alumni of three of Canadian farming's most demanding development programmes: Canada's Outstanding Young Farmers, the Canadian Agricultural Lifetime Leadership programme, and Nuffield Canada. The combined resume is, quite literally, the path Canadian agriculture uses to identify its next generation of operators.
Nuffield Canada, in particular, sends a small handful of Canadian farmers each year on a global study programme, with travel across multiple continents to examine production systems, supply chains, policy, and rural economies. The Cotes have studied and consulted on five continents — the kind of exposure that bends a farming career outward and tends to leave operators with a comparative sense of what Canadian land can do that other parts of the world cannot.
Before Black Fox, the couple ran a grain farm in rural Saskatchewan. The transition from grain farming to distilling is less of a leap than it sounds. A craft distiller is, in essence, a value-added grain processor: somebody who is willing to take their own crop and turn it into a finished consumer product rather than sell it into the global commodity stream. For two fifth-generation farmers with global agricultural credentials, building Canada's leading on-farm distillery is the logical, and ambitious, next chapter of the same career.
Why a Black Fox
The name has a specific origin. According to the Cotes' own materials, the Black Fox name comes from a black fox that took up residence one summer at the couple's original grain farm. The animal is described, in the brand's own language, as "a creature seldom seen but impossible to ignore" — "a symbol of cunning and craft."
That phrasing is doing real work. "Cunning and craft" is not a marketing slogan plucked from a thesaurus; it captures, more or less precisely, what a small Canadian distillery has to do to compete in a category historically dominated by Scottish, Irish, and American producers. Cunning, in the sense of buying decisions, sourcing, and product positioning. Craft, in the sense of the actual work — the still runs, the cuts, the maturation calls, the cask choices.
The name also pulls the brand back to the farm whenever it is in danger of drifting into pure marketing. The black fox showed up on the original farm. The farm is the South Saskatchewan River Valley. The grain is grown on the farm. The fruit and flowers are grown on the farm. The spirits are distilled on the farm. The visitors arrive on the farm. There is a single, geographically specific story here, and the brand is built to keep telling it.
From Crop to Connoisseur
Black Fox lists three product categories on its site: Canadian Gin ("the heart of every cocktail"), Canadian Whisky ("Whisky worth sharing"), and Experiences. The first two cover what the still produces. The third covers what the farm offers people who turn up in person.
The gin lineup includes Canadian Gin, Oaked Gin, Haskap Gin, Cucumber Gin, and Raspberry Gin. The breadth is a tell: a distillery making five distinct gins is treating gin not as a single SKU but as a category to develop — flavoured expressions, an oak-aged variation, and seasonal fruit gins built around prairie inputs like haskap, a small purple-blue berry that thrives in the Canadian prairies and tends to be associated with the Saskatchewan growing season.
The whisky lineup references single grain triticosecale, single grain secale cereale, cask finish whisky, and blended whisky. The Latin grain names — triticale and rye, respectively — are themselves an editorial signal: the distillery is listing whiskies by the specific cereal grain they are made from. That is how producers talk when grain provenance is the actual product, not a marketing add-on. In a cask-finish or single-grain whisky, the choice of grain is most of the flavour conversation, and Black Fox is foregrounding it.
The World's Best Cask Gin recognition sits at the intersection of these two worlds — the gin programme on one side and the cask programme on the other. It is a category specifically built for distillers who treat gin with the same maturation discipline normally reserved for whisky.
The Farm as a Destination
Black Fox is not only a distillery; it is an agritourism operation organised around the seasons. The on-property trail network covers 6.5 kilometres, and the experiences listed on the booking form span the full year.
Distillery Tours are described as "the journey of crop to connoisseur," walking visitors through what happens between a grain field on the farm and a bottle in the tasting room. The Snowshoe and Gin Flight pairing — a one-day snowshoe rental, access to the 6.5 km trail network, and a complimentary gin flight at the distillery for C$35 per person — is a literal embodiment of what the farm is selling: an outdoor experience on the land, finished with a tasting of what the land produces.
Floral Workshops cover beginner flower arranging. U-pick is offered in season for flowers, gladiola, and pumpkins. The Winter Patio and Whisky Dome — an outdoor patio, weather permitting, plus a heated dome — extends the visitor season well past the point when most prairie operations would close their doors. The booking form lists additional named experience options including the Founders Tour, Cocktail Class, Whisky Experience, Seasonal Experience, and Black Fox Excursion.
A visitor fee of C$10 per person applies to explore the farm in summer; the fee is waived with purchase. Walk-ins for shopping are welcomed during business hours. It is, by design, both a working farm and a place to spend an afternoon.
What the Awards Actually Mean
Black Fox has been recognised with the title of World's Best Cask Gin. In a Canadian craft-spirits context, that distinction is unusual on two fronts.
First, cask-aged gin is a niche within a niche. Most gin sold in Canada is unaged, bottled clear and used in mixed drinks. Cask-aged gin sits halfway between the gin and whisky categories: it is made on a gin botanical bill but matured in oak, picking up colour and structure that take a clear spirit somewhere closer to a barrel-aged white spirit. Producers who are serious about cask gin are usually producers who already have whisky-grade barrel inventory, and the discipline to manage maturation curves on more than one product.
Second, an international category win is, by definition, a comparison against producers from countries with longer industrial traditions in gin and in cask aging. For a Saskatchewan on-farm distillery to land that title is a signal about both the spirit itself and the operational seriousness of the people making it.
It is worth resisting the temptation to make the award the whole story. The award is the loud part of a quieter set of decisions: agricultural inputs from the same property the distillery sits on; a portfolio that treats grain choice as the main event in the whisky line; and a gin programme that has been built out far enough to support multiple expressions, including an oaked variant. The award is downstream of those choices.
Hours, Logistics, and Visitor Notes
Black Fox Farm and Distillery is at 245 Valley Road, Saskatoon, SK S7K 3J6, and reachable by phone at (306) 955-4645. The Tasting Room is open Wednesday through Sunday, from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., and is closed on Monday and Tuesday. Office hours run Tuesday through Sunday, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Walk-ins for shopping are welcomed during business hours.
The summer visitor fee of C$10 per person applies to explore the farm and is waived with purchase. The 6.5 km on-property trail network is available year-round. The Winter Patio and Whisky Dome operate seasonally, weather permitting.
Private events are welcomed; interested groups are asked to call the distillery at (306) 955-4645 to inquire. Minimum group size for private events is eight people. The Black Fox room has a maximum indoor capacity of 40, with additional outdoor capacity in season.
A few policies are worth knowing in advance. Experiences paid for in advance are non-refundable, but rescheduling is permitted up to 24 hours prior to the booked time. No pets are allowed on site — the farm's own pets, in the team's framing, prefer to have the place to themselves. Photos taken on the premises may be used for promotional purposes, and professional photoshoots are not permitted on site. For couples planning engagement or wedding photography, Black Fox is not the right venue; for everyone else, the standard visitor experience proceeds as expected.
The PRC Editorial View
There is a reason a fifth-generation farming couple's distillery is, in 2026, one of Canada's most well-known and well-respected craft operations. The pieces fit together. Two operators with global agricultural credentials, on a farm in the South Saskatchewan River Valley, with a clear answer to where every bottle's grain and fruit came from. A product range that takes both gin and whisky seriously enough to develop multiple expressions in each category. A visitor programme that uses the seasons rather than fighting them — snowshoeing in winter, U-pick in summer, a heated dome on the cold days in between.
The World's Best Cask Gin recognition is the headline a casual reader will remember, but the more durable signal is everything underneath it. The grain naming on the whisky line. The single-property sourcing on the fruit. The family-led leadership credentials. The 6.5 km of on-farm trails. These are choices a tourist-trap operation would not make. They are choices a serious agricultural business makes when it decides to add a second leg to the operation.
For Saskatchewan, Black Fox is also a useful counter to the assumption that the Canadian craft-spirits story belongs to British Columbia or Ontario. For Canadian agriculture more broadly, it is one of the cleaner examples of a grain operation moving up the value chain, on its own land, under its own brand, with the people whose names are on the door doing the work.
Key takeaways
- Black Fox Farm and Distillery is a fifth-generation, family-run craft distillery just outside Saskatoon, in the South Saskatchewan River Valley.
- Co-founders John Cote and Barb Stefanyshyn-Cote are alumni of Canada's Outstanding Young Farmers, the Canadian Agricultural Lifetime Leadership programme, and Nuffield Canada, and have studied and consulted on five continents.
- The distillery self-describes as Canada's leading on-farm distillery and has been recognised with the title of World's Best Cask Gin.
- Acres of fresh fruit, flowers, and grains are harvested on the property and distilled into gin, whisky, and liqueurs on site.
- The farm offers a 6.5 km trail network, U-pick, Floral Workshops, Distillery Tours, a Snowshoe and Gin Flight pairing at C$35 per person, and a Winter Patio and Whisky Dome.
- Tasting Room hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 12:00 to 6:00 p.m. Address: 245 Valley Road, Saskatoon, SK S7K 3J6. Phone: (306) 955-4645.
- Private events welcomed with a minimum of 8 people; Black Fox room indoor capacity 40, with additional outdoor capacity in season.
Frequently asked questions
- What is Black Fox Farm and Distillery?
- Black Fox Farm and Distillery is a family-run craft distillery and working farm just outside Saskatoon, in the South Saskatchewan River Valley. Co-founded by John Cote and Barb Stefanyshyn-Cote, it self-describes as Canada's leading on-farm distillery and produces whisky, gin, and liqueurs from acres of fresh fruit, flowers, and grains harvested on the property. It has been recognised with the title of World's Best Cask Gin.
- Where is Black Fox located, and how do I get there?
- Black Fox Farm and Distillery is at 245 Valley Road, Saskatoon, SK S7K 3J6, a few minutes outside the city in the South Saskatchewan River Valley. The phone number is (306) 955-4645. Walk-ins for shopping are welcomed during business hours; experiences and tours are best booked in advance through the website at blackfoxfarmanddistillery.com.
- What are the Tasting Room and office hours?
- The Tasting Room is open Wednesday through Sunday, from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., and is closed on Monday and Tuesday. Office hours run Tuesday through Sunday, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Hours and seasonal experiences can change; check blackfoxfarmanddistillery.com before a special trip.
- Is there a visitor fee, and what does it include?
- There is a C$10 per person fee in summer to explore the farm. The fee is waived with purchase. Visitors get access to the property and the 6.5 km of on-property trails. Specific experiences such as the Snowshoe and Gin Flight, Distillery Tours, Floral Workshops, the Founders Tour, the Cocktail Class, the Whisky Experience, the Seasonal Experience, and the Black Fox Excursion are booked separately.
- What spirits does Black Fox produce?
- Black Fox produces Canadian Gin, Canadian Whisky, and liqueurs. The gin lineup includes Canadian Gin, Oaked Gin, Haskap Gin, Cucumber Gin, and Raspberry Gin. The whisky lineup references single grain triticosecale (triticale), single grain secale cereale (rye), cask finish whisky, and blended whisky. The distillery has been recognised with the title of World's Best Cask Gin.
- Can I host a private event at Black Fox?
- Yes. Private events are welcomed, with a minimum group size of eight people. The Black Fox room has a maximum indoor capacity of 40, with additional outdoor capacity in season. Inquiries should be directed to the distillery by phone at (306) 955-4645.
- What is the cancellation policy on experiences?
- Experiences paid for in advance are non-refundable. Rescheduling is permitted up to 24 hours prior to the booked time, subject to availability.
- Are pets allowed, and can I do a professional photoshoot on the property?
- No pets are allowed on the property — the farm's own pets, as the team frames it, prefer to have the place to themselves. Photos taken on the premises may be used for promotional purposes, and professional photoshoots are not permitted on site. Standard visitor photography for personal use is not affected by that policy.
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