A Welcome Outcast
Written: Jan 03 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Proud, honest, aromatic, and it's not Tangle Ridge
Cons: Can't find it in the U.S., limited by its proof.
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| beerfly's Full Review: Alberta Springs 10 Year Old Canadian Rye Whisky |
There's a square peg in my round hole...
"There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will."
The Men Who Don't Fit In, by Robert W. Service, "The Bard of Canada."
Alberta Springs 10 Year Old Canadian rye whisky is one of the few true rye whiskies coming out of Canada these days (a statement which looks to be growing less true by the month, thank the great God). Unlike most Canadians that squeak by calling themselves rye by virtue of history, a small percentage of the grain in question, and sheer Yukon-size brass, this whisky's grainbill is 100% rye.
The whisky is distilled just outside of Calgary, Alberta, in the heart of Canada's rye-growing country. To see these plains in the winter is to wonder how anything will ever be green there again. But spring works its miracles, leaving the men of Alberta Distilling (a branch of the same company that owns Jim Beam) to work theirs.
They work with old equipment, almost ramshackle, and they are as independent a bunch as ever crossed a prairie. They make whiskies that are different from anything that was being made in Canada up until five or so years ago. The rest of the country is catching up, but Alberta Springs was there first.
As with most Canadian whiskies, Aberta Springs is the product of a blend of two whiskies, a high and a low proof. The high proof is very high, around 94% ABV, and is essentially vodka, grain neutral spirits. The low proof, however, comes off the doubler around 65% ABV, just wobbling with flavor. They're blended, and sent off to age in new white oak or first-fill bourbon casks.
They're sent off for ten years, an almost unbelievable amount of time for a Canadian whisky. The whiskies become one in a marriage and melding that eventually yields a golden amber liquid that is bottled at the traditional Canadian level of 40% ABV/80 proof.
I've got a little sample bottle of the Hirsch 12 Year Old Single Cask Canadian (and I've got to find me some more...), and it's sublime, but the nose off the Alberta Springs, at almost one-third less proof, gives it a run for the money. That's a masculine, muscular nose, crisp with rye and tinged with a little hot honey, almost Wild Turkey-like. There's a hard edge to it, almost like bay leaf or tarragon, a solid spiciness.
The mouth doesn't quite follow through on all the promise of the aroma, thought it gives a game try. (By the way, I'm drinking this from my new favorite tasting glass, a Bulleit Bourbon glass that is elliptical in shape with a heavy base, a beautiful glass for spirit.) Maybe that's the fault of the baseline proof, for it seems a bit thin. But the rye rocks through, muffled just a bit by sweetness. These are, after all, the people who produce the inexcusably mawkish Tangle Ridge, a whisky so sweet it seems like mead. Bad mead.
The spice is there, and it reminds me even more of tarragon now, though more subdued than in the aroma. It's just a bit spirity, too, surprising in a whisky of this age, though those cold Calgary winters can't encourage rapid aging. The spirity vaporishness comes across well, adding a touch of fuming brandy character to the whisky, the volatility of a finer spirit.
Do I like it? Yes I do, and I've put quite a hole in this bottle since buying it in the little LCBO in Sydenham, Ontario this past summer. I first cracked it on the shore of Lake Sydenham at a very nice, homey B&B. It's a little shy of half gone now, and considering the number of great bourbons and ryes I've got in my closet, and my propensity to quaff a beer more often than sip a spirit, I'm frankly amazed that I have had that much. Guess I like it quite a bit.
It really is a square peg, by the way, or almost square. It comes in a wonderfully blockish bottle, just about brick-shaped and sized, with roundish corners and a slight taper up to the narrow neck. The label is of a mountain stream in winter, with a lightly superimposed seal of a maple leaf surrounded by radiating heads of rye, with the circular legend "Vintage Whisky -- Vintage Rye."
The bottle has found a home between the Woodford Reserve and Knob Creek in my liquor cabinet (okay, the liquor shelf in my pantry), the three of them defiantly squared off against their conventional brothers in arms. Good company it keeps.
If you like rye whisky, and want to see what the Canadians can really do when they're not pandering to the masses, this is a great whisky to explore. I won't pretend that there aren't other Canadians that are more interesting to me (thought I can't review them here because not one of them is listed on epinions), but I'm also pretty happy I bought this one.
Maybe people will turn to this bolder, more honest Canadian, but... More Service seems appropriate.
"Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in."
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
beerfly
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Member: Lew Bryson
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Reviews written: 88
Trusted by: 79 members
About Me:
One bourbon, one Scotch, one beer, eh? I'll take Kentucky Spirit, Scapa, and HopDevil.
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