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Kensington Wine Market's 2023 Whisky Calendar UBER EDITION Day 11 - Canadian Club 45-Year-Old

Posted on December 15, 2023

by Evan

What we have here, is the oldest Canadian Whisky ever bottled.

Over the past five years, there have been a series of 40+-Year-Old Canadian Club bottles. It started with the release of the Canadian Club 40, back in 2017. The Canadian Club 45 Year Old is the fifth and final release of the series. For now at least. All of the whisky for this series was distilled back in 1977, using corn as the grain, at Hiram Walker Distillery in Windsor, Ontario.

Over the past 40+ years, the whisky for these releases quietly matured in ex-Bourbon barrels that previously held 10-Year-Old Canadian Rye Whisky, until the bottling of 40-Year-Old Canadian Club was released. Rumour has it that some of the whisky from this stock of 1977 whisky is being held back for an eventual 50-year-old release. Perhaps we will be talking about that in 2027 or 2028. For the moment, the 45 Year Canadian Club is the oldest whisky and boasts the highest ABV of the releases as well, clocking in at 50%.



The brand itself came to life back in 1854, created by Hiram Walker himself. It was originally known simply as Club Whisky, so one would assume it was a massive hit at all-night rave and techno parties during that era. It became known officially as Canadian Club in 1889, and the rest is history!

The Canadian Club brand has had it share of ownership changes during its century and a half lifetime. It was owned by Hiram Walker & Sons up until 1926, then the combined Hiram-Walker-Gooderham & Worts Limited from then until 1987. Allied Domecq had control of it from 1987 until 2005 when the company was acquired by Pernod Ricard. Fortune Brands held it for six years after that.

From 2011 up to now, the Canadian Club brand has been owned by Beam Suntory. Beam Suntory is a massive spirits company that was formed when the Japanese Suntory whisky company merged with (read: took over) Beam Global. The combined company also owns the Yamazaki, Chita, and Hakushu distilleries in Japan, Maker’s Mark and Jim Beam distilleries in the USA, Bowmore, Laphroaig, Glen Garioch, Auchentoshan, and the Ardmore distilleries in Scotland, The Cooley and Kilbeggen distilleries in Ireland, and more. Oh – and Alberta Distillers right within Calgary, Alberta.

Over the past few years, there have been rumours of the Canadian Club’s production at Hiram Walker Distillery coming to an end. This would make sense since the Hiram Walker Distillery is owned by Pernod Ricard and not Beam Suntory. One Canadian Club product is already made at Alberta Distillers in Calgary – that is the Canadian Club 100% Rye. Will the future of the Canadian Club brand be Alberta-bound, or will it stay in Ontario?

While we dwell on that, let's give the Canadian Club 45-Year-Old a taste.

Canadian Club 45-Year-Old – 50%

Evan’s Tasting Note<...

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KWM 2023 Whisky Calendar Blog Day 11 - Waterford Heritage Hunter 1.1

Posted on March 19, 2025

by Evan

While drinking all of this Scotch Whisky is most definitely not boring, I think it is time to change things up a little bit. How about we step away from Scotland and try a drop of Irish today, instead?

Irish Whiskey is in the middle of a boom the likes of which it has not seen in more than one hundred years. For a large part of the 20th Century, there were only two distilleries in all of Ireland making whiskey, which was far from its peak. That number increased to three in the mid-1980s, and that number stayed stagnant until around fifteen years ago.

The current Whiskey Boom, and the growing Irish economy have led to a modern revival of whiskey production in the country. There are currently more than thirty distilleries once again operating in Ireland, including the highly touted Waterford Distillery, which we will be tasting whisky from today.

The tale of the Irish Waterford Distillery actually starts in Scotland – on Islay in fact – with the sale of Bruichladdich Distillery to Remy Cointreau in 2012. Mark Reynier was the head of Bruichladdich at that time, and part of the group that resurrected the distillery after purchasing it back in the year 2000. Since the sale to Remy Cointreau, Reynier has taken is resources, knowledge, and fanatical passion and energy, and used it to forge two other distilleries: Waterford Distillery in Ireland and Renegade Rum Distillery in Grenada. With both of these projects, Mark has made terroir the focus of the spirits produced.



Above: Mark Reynier, trying to decide if his next distillery project would make terroir-driven Aqvavit in Norway or terroir-driven Ouzo in Greece.

Waterford Distillery was founded in 2016, on a site that previously held a Guinness brewery, in the town of Waterford which resides near Ireland’s southeast coast. Since its inception, Waterford Distillery has had a near-religious focus on the barley and the farms it is sourced from. Nearly every batch of whiskey it has released since the first in 2020 has been named after the farm the barley was harvested from or the barley strain itself. The full name for the whiskey we will taste today is Waterford – Arcadian Farm Origin - Heritage: Hunter 1.1. What does that actually mean? Here is the description from Waterford:

“Arcadian Barley, from our secret garden of delights, explores the natural flavours, intensity & honesty of the old ways. We have had to go to extraordinary lengths to eschew the quotidian varieties — those modern yield enhanced versions that distillers are obliged to use, in order to celebrate the lost flavours – flavours that evolved over centuries in harmony with Ireland’s terroirs. Indeed, to rediscover the flavour of iconic Irish barley we must venture back in time.

Hunter, named after pioneering plant breeder Dr Herbert Hunte...

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Kensington Wine Market's 2023 Whisky Calendar UBER EDITION Day 10 - Ardbeg Hypernova

Posted on December 10, 2023

by Evan

How much peat is too much peat? Scientists, philosophers, and whisky enthusiasts have debated this for eons and no conclusive findings have yet been identified. One of the greatest issues surrounding the question itself is the religious fervour it can bring out in those who are asked. One person will tell you that peat ruins whisky and they cannot abide by smoke and turf in their glass at all. Another will tell you they pour Octomore instead of milk on their breakfast cereal. When it comes down to it, both of these people are raving lunatics, but do not make the mistake of telling them that. Day 10’s Whisky in the 2023 KWM Whisky Calendar UBER Edition will be exciting news for one of those folks and a time to forget for the other. Today, we will taste the Ardbeg Hypernova.

Here is some info on the Hypernova, from Ardbeg’s website:

“The smokiest Ardbeg ever to mature into existence.

Introducing the latest Committee-only bottling in the Supernova Series… Ardbeg Hypernova. A dimension beyond the Supernovas that came before it, this fabric-tearingly smoky dram is a slice of Ardbeg history not to be missed.

Possibly the smokiest dram in the world (this one at least), Hypernova possesses a malty magnitude never before experienced. This is a brutally smoky dram that radiates flavour in every direction. HN22 can only be categorised as a truly cataclysmic event for the Distillery. It’s big, it’s powerful, and it’s pulling palates into a whole new dimension.

Propel your palate at full force towards powerful notes of tar, creosote and soot. Tumble further into the glass and explore ethereal whispers of aniseed, smoke and dark chocolate. Bitter almonds and smoked lavender fuse with curious hints of plasticine and burnt rubber, with a finish that collapses in on itself.

Non chill-filtered at 51.0% ABV.”

Ardbeg loves to release special editions. They currently release more limited releases than bottles they have in their core range, and Ardbeg fans are so rabid for them that each and everyone sells out quickly.

If you are aware of Ardbeg at all, you know that the distillery does not shy away from peat in the slightest. Their general peat spec for their malt is typically 50 PPM. Their Supernova limited releases were apparently beyond 100 PPM. Hypernova eclipses that number, apparently clocking in at 170 PPM. Surprisingly though, That is still below the level of many of the Octomore releases from Bruichladdich Distillery. Octomore 6.3 had a PPM level of 258 if my memory serves and I believe that has been the highest of all Octomore releases to date.

(I checked, and my memory does not serve. Octomore 8.3 hit 309 PPM).

Side note on this: In the next few years, we will likely see more of a debate on how the peat level of any given whisky is measur...

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KWM 2023 Whisky Calendar Blog Day 10 - G&M Distillery Label Ardmore 2000

Posted on December 10, 2023

We already talked about Distillery Label bottles from Gordon & MacPhail with Glentauchers back on Day Four of this year’s KWM Whisky Calendar. Well, we are back to that subject again with this G&M bottling of Ardmore.



Ardmore Distillery was founded in 1898, and since the beginning, its focus has been on peated whisky production. The Highland distillery was purpose-built to provide whisky for blending, as pretty much all distilleries were at the time. However, with Ardmore that hasn't changed much - even today just about all of Ardmore's production is still being used for blending, trading stock, or selling. Ardmore features prominently in the Teacher’s Highland Cream blended Scotch Whisky, as it has since its inception.

Only a small portion of the distillery’s Single Malt Scotch lands in official bottles released by Ardmore and its parent company Beam Suntory, and the only official bottle that makes its way to Alberta is the Ardmore Legacy, which we featured in a few years back in the 2020 edition of the KWM Whisky Calendar. The 40% ABV, no age statement Ardmore Legacy is, to put it politely, a bland, boring and terrible representation of what this distillery is capable of. Three years past the blog post I wrote on it, I am now comfortable admitting my tasting note for it is full of artistic interpretation.

Wait a minute - I guess all of my tasting notes are when it comes down to it, so that is just stating the obvious. My tasting notes should never be taken as gospel or a reference of factual information. Nobody’s tasting notes should be. Anyhow: try the Ardmore Legacy for yourself when you are able. I hope you find more in it than the watered-down to oblivion and lacking almost any quality of good Ardmore whisky version that I did.

One of the reasons Ardmore is the heart of Teacher's Highland Cream and also sought after by independent bottlers is that just about all of the whisky produced at the distillery is moderately peated. I have only tasted one unpeated Ardmore that I can recall. There is also a lighter-peated style that the distillery makes which is sometimes dubbed Ardlair. I suspect some of the Ardmore I have tasted have been this style, which tends to amp up the sweet, creamy and fruity notes of the whisky.

Beam Suntory seems to treat Ardmore as the red-headed stepchild in its Scotch Whisky portfolio. When it comes to profile and releases, Bowmore and Laphroaig get plenty of attention, being the Islay darlings that they are. Auchentoshan in the Lowlands gets a similarly prolific treatment. Even Glen Garioch gets more single malt releases and attention, and that is saying something!

Every giant spirits company is guilty of this. Far, far more Blended Scotch than Single Malt Scotch worldwide. They have their distilleries that they shine a spotlight on, and then they have their pr...

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Kensington Wine Market's 2023 Whisky Calendar UBER EDITION Day 9 - Glenfarclas Family Cask 1990

Posted on December 9, 2023

by Evan

Many of us are very familiar with Glenfarclas as a distillery and the story of the Grant family behind it. The distillery has been owned by the Grants for six Generations now. To keep things simple for the rest of us to remember the family history, all six patriarchs of the family have been named John or George. The current face of the distillery is John. The family has owned the distillery for more than 150 years. 

What was Glenfarclas selling for their core range ten, fifteen, and twenty years ago? The same bottles as they have today. Glenfarclas’ core range consists of the 105 Cask Strength, 12-year-old, 15-year-old (which was in the 2019 KWM Whisky Calendar), 17-year-old, 21-year-old (which was also in the 2019 KWM Whisky Calendar), 25-year-old, 30 year old, and 40-year-old.

This doesn’t even take into account the impressive slew of Family Cask single vintage releases that at one point included every year between 1954 and 2002! Style-wise, they are still sherry-cask-focused for the entire range. No playing around with cask finishes or experimenting with peat here.

The Grant's see themselves as curators of Glenfarclas Distillery for future generations of their family. They want to make sure that what has been built remains, so they don’t make big decisions solely based on the boom-and-bust ecosystem of the whisky industry. Change is great, and change is fun, but it is refreshing to find a family and a distillery that doesn’t change everything based on the whims of trends and shareholders.

Going legal in 1836 and run by the Grant Family since 1870, Glenfarclas as a brand has been the very model of consistency for quite a long time. This unshaking persistence is refreshing compared to the vast and often confusing changes other Scotch Whisky labels have gone through over the past decade or more. One popular brand has shifted from age statements to colour codes and is now back again, but not the same as it once was. It can be difficult to be a fan of a brand that can't even maintain a core range well. That is not something that you have to worry about with Glenfarclas.

Glenfarclas as a brand has been important to me for quite a while. It was my first introduction to selling whisky. Years ago I would pour Glenfarclas at festivals, sometimes alongside George Grant himself. I had the chance to visit Scotland and the distillery for the first time in October of 2019, and it made me fall in love with the whisky all over again.

Back to today's dram: This 1990 vintage single cask is from the Glenfarclas Family Cask range. This is a single ex-Sherry butt bottled for the Summer 2022 release of the series. It is bottled at a cask strength of 51.3%. Let's dive in!

Glenfarclas Family Cask 1990 - Summer '22 Release &nd...

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