The Future Of Canadian Whisky
“Keep a fifth of something in your desk; Mr. Draper drinks rye.”
That’s the advice Joan gives to Peggy in the 2007 series premiere of Mad Men during her tour of the Sterling Cooper office, as to the whiskey preferences of her new boss.
Less than a year after that scene hit American television, stocks of Rittenhouse, Sazerac, and Wild Turkey rye had been wiped off the domestic market, distillers were scrambling to produce more, and new labels were tapping into aged rye stocks from wherever they could be found. The classic cocktail revival was in full swing, Don Draper was the most popular drinker on television, and rye whiskey was having its moment in the sun again after decades of irrelevance in the American market.
What was known then as “the Mad Men effect” created a huge shift in the tastes of American whiskey drinkers, yet those with a keen eye for labels were quick to point out the paradox: Don Draper wasn’t drinking Kentucky rye; he was a Canadian whisky fan. Perhaps the ultimate irony, however, was that during the shortage the American rye substitutes flooding the market were sourced either from the Lawrenceburg distillery in Indiana—the former home of Seagram’s Seven Crown—or from Alberta Distillers north of the border.
During that era, brands like High West, Templeton, Bulleit and Redemption were selling Americans an entirely different style of rye whiskey than the labels they sought to replace. Unlike Kentucky rye, the whiskies from Lawrenceburg and Alberta had no corn in the mash bill. They were never intended to be sold as individual rye whiskies, but rather part of a larger blend made in the Canadian style. All that mattered to these brands was that Americans wanted rye whiskey and they had it. No one knew the difference, anyway.
The resurgence of Canadian style rye as a stand-alone product was novel, but the American palate has long been predisposed to its softer, mellower character. Previous generations of Americans had a love affair with Canadian style rye that went back decades. If they weren’t drinking Canadian Club or Crown Royal in the 1960s, they were drinking Seagram’s Seven Crown—a Canadian-style blended whiskey made at Seagram’s American distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana (now called MGP)—and blasting through 7 and 7 cocktails (Seven Crown mixed with Seven-Up) with reckless abandon.
Mature stocks of Canadian style rye were available during the Mad Men boom because of the drop in demand for Canadian style blends. Dating back to the 1980s, a series of events doomed the prestige of Canadian brands in the eyes of American whiskey drinkers, the first being a generational change in taste, with clear spirits like vodka gaining preference. The second was due to shifting in regulations as pertains to quality. Contrary to popular belief, Canadian whisky today does not allow for the addition of unaged neutral spirits to its blended labels.
Ironically, it was actually the American blends that were guilty of such atrocities, with regulations allowing for as much as 80% of U.S. blended whiskey to contain non-whiskey spirits. That being said, global whiskey consumption was on the decline, losses were adding up for producers north of the border, and the much-maligned 9.09% rule was created to keep pace.
According to Canadian whisky expert and historian Davin de Kergommeaux, there was pressure on Canadian distillers to cut costs and improve profitability. “One way to do that was to take advantage of tax incentives offered by the U.S. government to incorporate small amounts of American spirits or wine into Canadian whisky,” he writes in his book Canadian Whisky.
While the tax incentives were huge for Canadian whiskies being exported to America, the whiskies being distilled for the Canadian market remained unchanged, but as American whiskey came back into fashion decades later, with a focus on unadulterated premium labels, the 9.09% rule became a scarlet letter. American aficionados used Canada’s laxer regulations to argue for the superiority of American whiskies and Canadian whisky as a whole was excluded from the industry’s rising tide that also bolstered the reputation of Japanese and Scotch whiskies.
By marketing Canadian whisky through a Bourbon-filtered lens, American brands like Whistlepig Rye have gained traction with American drinkers, but have completely separated themselves from the Canadian genre in the process. Canadian distillers make corn, wheat, and barley whiskies much like American distillers, but few of those whiskies have captured the imagination of American drinkers like rye has, especially when blended and transparently marketed as Canadian in origin.
Brothers Zach and Nick Taylor, the co-founders of Found North Whisky, are changing that perception by highlighting the quality of mature Canadian whisky stocks when blended and bottled with little to no dilution. “We fell in love with Canadian whisky for two reasons,” Zach told me during a recent phone conversation; “We love its versatility and we love to blend.”
“We are noticing a shift in the conversation surrounding blending in the United States, especially as more Bourbon and rye brands are sourcing from the same two or three distilleries,” his brother Nick added; “Blending is how one MGP-sourced bourbon brand differentiates itself from the next, revealing a practice that has always occurred at U.S. distilleries, straight bourbon or otherwise. Our whiskies are old, well-made and optimized for blending.”
Therein lies the reason behind Found North’s striking success in the current domestic market: they’re blending, bottling, and marketing old Canadian whiskies to new, unprejudiced drinkers with huge age statements, to boot. The brand’s latest batch, an epic blend of 17-26 year old whiskies primarily distilled from corn and bottled at 64.1%, is turning heads across the nation.
While Found North has primarily attracted Bourbon drinkers looking for a bold alternative, the Taylors are quick to focus on the differences between Canadian and American whiskey. “While we recognize the similarities in grain composition, our goal is not to market ‘Canadian Bourbon’,” Zach added; “In fact, it is the unique Canadian distillation techniques that allow us to create flavors that don’t and can’t exist within the structure of Bourbon production. That is what is so exciting about Found North.”
I have to concur.
Zach and Nick are doing far more than just sourcing quality Canadian whiskies for the American market. Unlike other bottlers, they’re putting their unique stamp on each batch, blending the whiskies into something greater than the sum of their parts and carving out a new niche in the process. Take for example the recent Found North Batch 005: a marriage of 8 year old wheat whisky with 21 year old corn whisky.
“Because most Canadian whiskies are fermented, distilled and aged entirely from one single grain, it offers maximum flexibility during blending,” Nick mentioned when discussing Found North’s process; “Canadian distilleries use different fermentation temperatures, still types, filling strengths and wood maturation regimens. The fact that new oak is rarely used for the entirety of the maturation actually allows for these beautiful old whiskies to develop without getting over-oaked.”
“While the Canadian whisky process creates so much opportunity for flavor diversity, the larger brands focus their blending efforts on consistency,” Zach added; “as a new brand with different goals, we don’t have the same pressure to constantly recreate the same style of whisky. Our focus instead is on flavor creation and exploration. Found North is not about what we did before, rather it's about what we can do now.”
That’s a message Don Draper could easily get behind.
-David Driscoll