Canada's only magazine dedicated to distillers, spirits and cocktail culture.
It’s been a minute since we’ve had to worry about those pesky little things called grades, but for distillers like Saanichton’s de Vine Wines & Spirits, report card day still comes around each year with the release of Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible and the reviews and scores therein.
“We’ve seen the revamping of Scotch, or the experimentation side of things, I suppose. I’m not saying we do don’t it or haven’t done it, but it’s things we’ve done 60 or 70 years ago. Primarily, all of the Glenfarclas range is now 100 per cent aged in Oloroso sherry casks. Back in the 1960s we did an experiment where we filled 15 different types of sherry casks—fino, Manzanillo, Amontillado, Pedro Jimenez… About 20 years ago was the first time you started seeing finishing ranges on Scotch, and ever since then people have been jumping on the bandwagon.
Looking for wisdom at the bottom of a whisky glass? Vancouver’s upcoming Be Wise Speaker Series and Whisky Festival has merged world-class whisky tastings with business-oriented conversation in the round, for a most sophisticated pairing.
The smell alone is intoxicating: that heady fusion of sawdust and toffee scents that signals a whisky-aging warehouse. It wafts out of a raised white garage door just outside Windsor, where a bottle of teal-labelled Canadian Club Chronicles 41 glows the colour of teak.
If you thought the debate over whisky and age was resolved, a B.C. newcomer and Scotch mainstay start the discussion over again
You might forgive Andrew Campbell Wall if he seems just a wee bit bullish.
Wall is the Macaloney Ambassador for the neophyte Victoria Caledonian Distillery, which is based in B.C.’s capital city, but is Scottish through and through. Just to make the point, Wall is wearing his Campbell kilt and full regalia as he samples his wares at this year’s BC Distilled festival.
While he pours me a dram of Mac na Braiche Single Malt Spirit, he can barely contain his excitement.
For its ninth Private Edition series, the venerable Highland whisky house Glenmorangie has released its first single malt aged in American ex-rye whisky casks. In the late 1990s, Dr. Bill Lumsden, Glenmorangie’s Director of Distilling, Whisky Creation & Whisky, travelled to the United States, where he was inspired by the elegant cinnamon and clove notes of rye whisky. “I have always loved American rye whisky’s spicy character, and I believed our Distillery’s smooth house style would perfectly complement the nuances of ex-rye casks,” he says.
It might be called EAT! Vancouver, but we’re here for the drinks.
Which is why we were thrilled to discover that the annual foodie festival is returning to Vancouver Nov. 5-10 with more than 37 acclaimed chefs and 18 events, including a luxurious all-new cognac event.
On the drive up to Saanichton from Victoria, hand-lettered signs for honey and free-range eggs compete with honour-system farm stands exchanging wildflowers, produce or jam for money stuffed in a can. When I arrive on an oceanside hilltop, Ken Winchester points out 25 acres of certified organic vineyards, maple and fruit trees and, farther in the distance, barley being farmed to his specs before it’s malted at Phillips Brewery in Victoria. “I’m also a beekeeper, among other things,” says the deVine winemaker and Bruichladdich-trained distiller, gesturing to the hives. He’s more than that: he’s a farm-to-flask disciple.
It was a scene that might have been straight out of Prohibition—were this not 2018.
On the morning of January 19, 2018, plainclothes teams of B.C. Liquor Control and Licensing Branch agents descended upon two licensed establishments in Vancouver and Nanaimo: Fets Whisky Kitchen and The Grand Hotel. Later that day, in Victoria, they visited The Union Club and Little Jumbo Cocktail Bar. What were they after? Illicit booze, grey market goods being sold as the real thing, or maybe something even more heinous?