A unique and flavorful trend is brewing throughout New Brunswick: the infusion of local wild blueberries in beverages crafted by the province’s many beer, wine and spirit producers.

By merging traditional techniques with our region’s rich agriculture, New Brunswick’s brewers, vintners, and distillers are incorporating the sweet, tangy essence of wild blueberries into their craft beverages, creating a unique blend in each delicious sip.

One such producer is Moncton’s Magnetic Hill Winery. Carefully restored from its origins in 1867 and located atop its namesake, the Winery fuses historical allure with a sophisticated atmosphere, creating unforgettable experiences and products rooted in pride of place.

“We say we’re elevating fruit wines to new heights,” said Zach Everett, a winemaker and co-owner at Magnetic Hill Winery. “Wild blueberries, since the first couple of years we’ve been producing wine, have been a key ingredient and a key story to tell about our region. To be able to feature our New Brunswick wild blueberries in that innovative, fun way? We’re proud of that.”

While the winery stocks a dozen products at ANBL locations across the province, their dedicated staff works hard to produce 40 different wines under the Magnetic Hill label, including four that depend on New Brunswick wild blueberries for their production.

“Our Bay of Fundy Blue is the best seller of that lot, and then we do the Reflections Rosé,” Zach said. “The Rosé is a blend of strawberries, blueberries and rhubarb. It’s light, it’s bright, it’s aromatic, so it’s kind of a sweeter style of rosé.”

Inspired by how the Spanish blended local grapes and citrus to create sangria, the team at Magnetic Hill developed the Go Wild Sangria, which features New Brunswick wild blueberries alongside rhubarb, strawberries and cranberries in “a cool potpourri of different local fruits.” Last but not least is Magnetic Hill’s Levitation Blue, crafted honouring traditional, time-tested methods.

“We make it like champagne, but it’s made purely out of New Brunswick wild blueberries,” Zach said. “This is a really cool niche product where, if you had to compare it to something, we would compare it to a dry Lambrusco. But then with wild blueberries, when you’re fermenting them into wine, there’s spices in there, there’s earthiness.”

That earthiness is accentuated by the nature of wild blueberries, where each handful should taste different from the last.

“There is this form of terroir associated with them,” Zach said. “Since they are wild, every single blueberry patch has, technically, a different ratio of all the different varieties of blueberries. To capture that in a bottle as a winemaker, it is a real special thing.”

Stephen Legacy is the manager and co-owner at Bathurst’s Four Rivers Brewing, a family business founded in 2017 alongside his father, brother and uncle. Four Rivers crafted their delicious Blueberry Blonde Ale to showcase how wild blueberries impact other industries in the province.

“Some of the other blueberry beers you might have seen tend to go with extracts or even purees,” Stephen said. “We created a recipe using the frozen wild blueberries that you can find from all the farms across New Brunswick. For a 1000-litre batch, it takes us 200 pounds of blueberries to make. We build a little double boiler where we just add in a little bit at a time,” he said.

The Blueberry Blonde Ale owes its more natural, flavorful blueberry taste and unique visual palette to boiling down the local produce in-house.

“It is more crisp, refreshing, just a subtle hint that tells you that it’s there, but it really shows in the color,” Stephen said. “The reason why you won’t see most breweries doing the actual fruit is that it’s very labour intensive and takes time. But you can’t argue with the results.”

For Legacy, the support of the local wild blueberry industry stems from his experience trying to get Four Rivers off the ground in Bathurst.

“When we were first opening, we visited other breweries and they gave us all the information we could possibly want on how to get started,” he said. “Now it kind of pays it forward when we’re using wild blueberries from different farms in Grand Falls, Edmundston, Restigouche. It’s so nice to see that everyone gets to be involved, and it’s something they can feel proud of.”