Today is a good day to be a Canadian boozer, and especially exciting for those of us in the prairie provinces.
Yes, gentle reader, amid much pomp and fanfare, the Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye has just been proclaimed the 2016 World Whisky of the Year.
Not bad for a little distillery from Gimli, Manitoba, a small town of 2000 people about an hour north of Winnipeg.
Surrounded by waving fields of grain, and an abundance of clean water filtered through the limestone bedrock of the Canadian Shield, Gimli is ideally suited for whisky production, which they have taken full advantage of.
Our story begins back in 1939, when the now-iconic crown-shaped bottle was created as a gift for the visit of King George VI & Queen Elizabeth to Canada.
Not only was the bottle unique, but it came regally clad in a purple velvet bag, which your humble narrator dutifully repurposed as a storage sack for my lego pieces when I was 5 years old.
Indeed, generations of Canadian children have enjoyed the hand-me-down velvet pouch with the golden drawstring, which found second lives holding dice, toys, and all sorts of childhood gadgets each time mom and dad polished off another bottle of Crown Royal.
Even today, your intrepid liquor reporter dutifully saves the velvet sack from each bottle of Crown Royal that is emptied in my swinging bachelor pad, just in case one of those 70s key parties breaks out and there are no fishbowls to be found.
If your only recollections of Gimli are of a dwarf from Lord of the Rings, you may be surprised to learn that the small town was first settled by Canadians of Icelandic descent back in 1875, and became something of a hot destination for Icelandic immigration to Canada, and is still home to the only Icelandic festival in Canada.
Getting back to the whisky that put Gimli on the map, Crown Royal was originally blended from 50 different Canadian whiskies as a one-off event for a visit from the British monarchy, but proved so popular that production has continued unabated since then.
Today, Crown Royal is the best-selling Canadian Whiskey in the USA, and is increasingly popular the world over.
Although Crown Royal is made in a tiny village of only 2000 people, it boasts the marketing muscle of Diageo, the world’s largest drinks company, making it a contender on the world stage.
It seems that no scrappy little distillery will survive long in the this age of globalization, and Crown Royal was no exception, being owned by the Montreal-based Seagrams Group until 2000, when it was folded into London-based Diageo, the world’s largest producer of spirits.
The original Crown Royal bottle in its royal purple velvet cloak is likely the most familiar to the average Canadian boozer, but that’s not quite the blend that was pronounced the best in the world.
It was a premium blend called Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye, made from 90% rye grains and aged for longer in oak than the classic recipe.
The 90% rye used in the mash contributes a spicy flavour to the whisky, which is a signature flavour Canadian whiskies are known for on the world stage.
Your intrepid liquor reporter was lucky enough to sample this whisky at an industry tasting event a few months back, and it was indeed worthy of the high honours being bestowed upon it.
The flavours were heavy with vanillin from the extended oak barrel aging, some butterscotch on the tongue, and plenty of spice in the aftertaste from the heavy use of rye grains.
Some people like to mix their Crown Royal with Coca-cola, but your humble narrator is an unrepentant whisky snob, and prefer to enjoy it straight, or possibly with a splash of spring water to bring the essential oils out of solution so they can coat the tongue more effectively.
At only $40, the Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye is a bargain for the 2016 World Whisky of the Year, but it will have most likely sold out of every store in the prairies by the time you read this.
If you can’t find a bottle at your friendly neighbourhood booze merchant, you can always take home the classic recipe, and add another one of those purple velvet sacks to your collection!
