Raising a glass for Gilbey’s.

New Toronto was at one time Canada’s top producer of some of the world’s best-selling gins, whiskies and other fine brands of liquor and spirits.

The aroma of fomenting whiskey, exotic rums and liquors filled the air over the area some 86-years ago originating from what was the sprawling plant of W.A. Gilbey (Canada) Ltd., which for almost 50-years stood where the Ford Performance Centre is today.

The three-acre site where the arena stands at Kipling Ave. and New Toronto St., back in 1933 was famous for producing the wildly popular Gilbey’s London Dry Gin and Gilbey’s Spey Royal Scotch.

The alcoholic spirits from the British-based Gilbey’s was first sold in Canada in 1905 and the plant was opened in 1933. At the time it employed about 50 area residents, records show.

Within three years an addition was built to the building to cater to rising booze sales. The plant at the time was very busy with trucks arriving with raw products and then taking the finished spirits to market.

The company would produce and market more than 50 brands for the Canadian market, including best-seller Smirnoff Vodka, which outsold their other products; including Harvey’s fine line of imported Spanish Sherry.

Gilbey’s Black Velvet was the most famous of five Canadian whiskies made at the New Toronto plant. The others produced here included: Very Best, Golden Velvet, Old Gold, Special Old and Governor General Rums.

“Gilbey products vary from Italian Vermouth to excellent French table wines and champagnes.” according to the firm’s promotional materials. “The Gilbey line of domestic liqueur gins are unequalled in sales anywhere.”

The company started in England in 1857 and is still managed by descendants of the original partners.

The initials “W & A” in the Gilbey Company name stand for the brothers Walter and Alfred Gilbey, who upon returning from the Crimean War in 1856, decided to open a retail wine business.

Gilbey’s later became part of International Distillers & Vintners, a beer, wine and spirits distribution company. In 1998 IDV merged with United Distillers to create United Distillers & Vintners, the spirits division of Diageo.

The plant was shut in the early 1980s and sold to the Board of Education and later became the Ford Performance Centre.