American Bottlers of Canadian Whiskey

[sku]

There are a number of Canadian Whiskies that are bottled by US companies. I'm thinking of Pendleton, Hirsch, Phillip's Union and Snake River Stampede. Does anyone know who distills these whiskies or which Canadian distilleries tend to sell to independent bottlers? I'm assuming it would be one of the big ones like Crown Royal or Canadian Club, but who knows?

[ThomasH]

I know that brands such as Windsor Canadian, Canadian Mist and Black Velvet are all tankered in bulk to the US and bottled here. I also know that some, but not all of Canadian Club's bottling is done here too. Jim Beam has done some of it at its Clermont bottling facility. There are only a handful of distillers in Canada so it shouldn't be hard to tell where some brands get their whiskey!

Thomas

[cowdery]

Some of this gets a little strange. Although Jim Beam owns the Canadian Club brand, they don't own the distillery. Pernod does and call sell whiskey to anyone it wants. I believe BF owns the distillery where Canadian Mist is made (which is US-bottled) but it sells whiskey to other parties and BF doesn't necessarily know about it. Part of that is whenever you are selling bulk whiskey, the party you sell it to may use (i.e., bottle and sell) it, or they may in turn sell some or all of it in bulk to someone else. If they want to, a distiller can do some chemical testing that will tell them where something came from (there aren't that many distilleries) and sometimes they're surprised where their whiskey shows up.

[Martian]

Chuck, its interesting that you mentioned Canadian Mist. It won a Double Gold Medal award at this year's San Francisco World Spirits Competition. It's hard to believe but true.

[ratcheer]

Chuck, its interesting that you mentioned Canadian Mist. It won a Double Gold Medal award at this year's San Francisco World Spirits Competition. It's hard to believe but true.

Really? I have always considered CM to be bottom shelf.

Tim

[cowdery]

Really? I have always considered CM to be bottom shelf.

Tim

Mist is soldly middle-shelf, with the bottom shelf being pure commodity products. I am pretty sure it's still the largest selling Canadian as well, by a wide margin.

[ILLfarmboy]

Mist is soldly middle-shelf, with the bottom shelf being pure commodity products. I am pretty sure it's still the largest selling Canadian as well, by a wide margin.

I never would have guessed that. I would have guessed Windsor canadian and Canadian Club or Black Velvet were the mid-shelf Coke and Pepsi of Canadian whiskeys, with a lot of older folks choosing Windsor Canadian.

[cowdery]

Windsor Canadian and Black Velvet, yes. Canadian Club is considered slightly higher on the quality pole.

[Solomon2]

I tried some CM two months ago and it made me quite ill. Tried it a second time days later and the same thing happened.

That never happened to me before, not even with other Canadian whiskeys. I've pretty much finished most of my bourbon experimentation, I was going to do Canadian, but now I think I'll skip it and move on to Irish or Scotch.