Whisky Awards
Alberta’s Whiskies are Ready to Face the World!
A few short months ago, in the spring, something sort of awesome happened. After extensive efforts and I am sure, many discussions, a piece of legislation in Alberta created the Alberta Whisky category. Bill 24, the Alberta Whisky Act stipulates that to be called Alberta Whisky, spirits need to be produced, aged, and bottled in the province and using a minimum of 2/3 of the cereals in the mash to be sourced from Alberta.
We’ve known for a number of years that Alberta is a wonderful, and logical place to make great whisky, we have the grains, we have the water, we have the pool of talent that all come together to make top quality spirit ready to go into barrel and bear the name of whisky. With the hope of course being to continue to tell the world that some of the greatest whiskies are to be found here at home, in the heart of some of the finest farmlands in the world in sight of the Rockies.
We had a few conversations with the Alberta Craft Distillers Association in the spring and summer, and from those conversations, we decided that it made sense to run an “Alberta Whisky Awards” showcasing some of the best whiskies, and really highlight which ones are the very best. We’ve been running the Alberta Beverage Awards for 14 years already, and it’s the largest drinks competition in Alberta. It’s all about sharing our province’s great selection of wine, beer, spirits, and all those things in the middle that make Alberta a great place for beverage enthusiasts. So, it also made sense to undertake all the judging for Alberta Whisky under that umbrella.
Did you know that there are around 50 whiskies in Alberta that currently would be eligible for the classification? The Alberta Whiskies were judged as part of the regular competition with other international and other Canadian examples (those results to be published next month in October’s issue), but on one afternoon, our judges got additional guidance for the blind tasting, revised scoring parameters, and tasted flights tasted by multiple panels in these categories, “Rye forward or rye dominant whiskies”, “Single Malt Whiskies”, along with “blended whiskies” and “Bourbon Style Whiskies”. As time progresses, likely we will see even more whisky categories – certainly, we’ll continue to see more quality focused spirits made in Alberta each year for some time. We clarified with all the distillers about whether or not their whiskies would be compliant with the new legislation, since all the whisky’s production predate the Alberta Whisky Act and are confident that the whiskies on these pages meet or exceed the criteria – though it is possible one or two might be on the edges of the requirements.
Thank you to all of our stewards, our judges, and our team at Culinaire, and thank you to our photographer, Jason Dziver, the Carriage House Inn of Calgary, North Water, and everyone who trusted us to assess their spirits, including the Alberta Craft Distillers Association, who let us take these important awards on.
To be clear, all these whiskies are excellent, but in the end, we stand by our recommendations that these are the very best in their category, and we look forward to doing this again next year. All the prices except where noted, reflect the distillery pricing, and we do recommend contacting the distillery directly as some products are in very limited supply, though we have also listed a CSPC code to aid ordering or finding a bottle from your favourite bottle merchant.
