One of the greatest fits of violence to mark the dark days of Prohibition was, the story goes, over a case of Canadian rye whisky. On a cold February morning in Chicago 1929, four men, two posing as police officers, burst into SMC Cartage Co., where George “Bugs” Moran’s North Side Gang was fresh off highjacking an expensive shipment of Canadian whisky from Al Capone on its way across the Detroit River. The counterfeit police officers announced a raid and then opened fire. Moran, who had slept in that day, skipped town, and Capone became the undisputed king of Chicago whisky smuggling.
The dangerous romance of that era looms large in the imagination of the whisky world: the thrill of the locked side door, the whispered password, the smoke-filled parlour, the clink of illicit glassware. And centre stage is Canadian rye whisky, as much as a million gallons a year of which poured into the United States from distilleries such as Hiram Walker & Sons in Windsor, Ontario, whose Canadian Club could be legally bottled and exported from Canada, and then—well, that was nobody’s business.
And yet, this spirit—once worth committing the foulest of crimes for—is conspicuously absent from the mythology of the modern cocktail. Often understood as cheap, inferior, flavourless “brown vodka,” Canadian rye has a reputation that’s been slow to catch up with the vigorous revival of scotch and bourbon over the last several decades.
But that story is changing, as connoisseurs wake up to some of the most underappreciated whisky ever aged in a barrel. Canada has always been a storehouse of technical whisky craft for those who know where to look. Now, as the whisky world rediscovers our rye, both upstart and legacy distilleries are placing it back on the top shelf.
In Vancouver’s most respected cocktail bars, you’ll find fine Mexican tequila, French cognac, American bourbon, English gin, and Scotch whisky. One of the few to feature the Canadian national spirit is Prophecy, tucked underneath the Hotel Rosewood Georgia, which has, on and off, served liquor since the days of Capone.
Bar manager Jeff Savage, formerly of Botanist, grew up in Calgary, where rye whisky—served with ice, water, and ginger ale—was part of the fabric of his young adulthood. Today he keeps five varieties stocked on the bar’s back wall. “It’s a part of who I am when it comes to my journey,” he says, “not only within the cocktail world, but in building my palate as a professional and building my ability to drink as a man.”
When he opened Prophecy, Savage mixed a cocktail inspired by the long, smoke-hazed road between Vancouver and Calgary he drove back and forth during his father’s long illness and after his death. Infused beeswax and hay give weight and pastoral aroma to the Canadian whisky, alongside pasilla Mixe chili peppers, Lagavulin, and a puff of smoke—served in a matryoshka doll that represents the Slavic diaspora who dot the road with borscht restaurants. Canadian rye, he says, affords the cocktail—the Souvenir—a light and dry backbone with a rich, full texture that couldn’t be matched by any other spirit.
It’s difficult to pin down the taste of Canadian rye because its definition is extraordinarily vague—it does not, legally, have to contain rye at all, unlike its American counterpart, which must contain more than 50 per cent of the grain. Historically, though, the Canadian whisky tradition is rich: around Confederation, more than three million Canadians were served by at least 200 distilleries. Cheap and available rye, which can be grown on marginal farmland, was distilled and blended with liquor from barley, corn, and wheat to create Canadian whisky, lending it the moniker rye, as well as its distinctive aroma of warm spices, floral and herbal notes, and a dry finish.
This homegrown rye established itself after the Second World War as a cleaner, lighter whisky than the heavier scotch—a reputation that has kept it both popular as an export to the United States and denigrated among connoisseurs at home.
The particular bottle Savage chose for the Souvenir speaks to its strangely overlooked and unappreciated quality. Alberta Premium, a product of Alberta Distillers Limited, founded in 1946, is sold in a plastic-capped bottle with a suspiciously inexpensive price tag, reinforcing rye’s image as a cheap bottom-shelf liquor. But professionals in the industry will quietly tell you that this unassuming bottle is wildly undervalued and strikes the nose with all the sophistication of a scotch or bourbon manyfold its price.
“I think the high-end whiskies are every bit as interesting, every bit as exciting as the top bourbons and the top scotches.” —Davin de Kergommeaux
That Alberta Premium punches so high above its weight shouldn’t be surprising. The hulking concrete towers of Alberta Distillers that rise next to a railway siding in southeast Calgary also supply some of the rye industry’s heaviest hitters, such as Canadian Club, which routinely hauls in awards, including best Canadian rye at the 2024 World Whiskies Awards. It has also supplied distillate as a blank slate for aging and blending to numerous American whisky makers, such as the wildly popular and highly awarded Whistle Pig. The distillery has recently poked its nose onto the top shelf with its own Reifel Rye, which offers a bigger and more flavourful take, more suited to the tasting glass, as well as a cask-strength Alberta Premium that was named 2020 Whisky of the Year by veteran whisky writer Jim Murray.
Alberta Distillers is only one of a generation of contenders pushing Canadian rye back onto the map with bolder, more flavourful expressions, alongside Hiram Walker’s Lot No. 40 and Campari Group’s Forty Creek from Ontario, and Crown Royal’s Northern Harvest Rye from Manitoba, as well as many small independent distilleries across the country (which, unlike their larger counterparts, are Canadian-owned).
“I think the high-end whiskies are every bit as interesting, every bit as exciting as the top bourbons and the top scotches,” says Canadian whisky writer Davin de Kergommeaux. “They’ve always been making flavourful whisky—it’s just that nobody bought it. It’s always been for a select audience.”
Reece Sims, a Vancouver spirits writer and tasting coach, says a new appreciation for Canadian rye is pushing blenders and distillers toward higher proportions of rye grain, higher-proof spirits, and whiskies aged in fresh oak barrels that impart bolder flavours, making whiskies that are better sipped than mixed with cola. For small distilleries entering the market, though, she says it’s an uphill battle—competing with rye giants with storehouses of aged spirit at their disposal.
Some craft distilleries are beginning to mature more stock, she notes, but there are still more distilleries that need more time than there are those that have been around long enough.
Distiller Brennan Colebank says he has experienced those challenges at his Vancouver Island microdistillery Stillhead, where, since he opened his doors in 2017, he’s made his share of mistakes. “The first few casks were not good,” he says with a laugh. “Everyone wants your oldest whisky, but I didn’t come from a big distillery background. It really took probably until 2019, early 2020, for us to figure out what profile we wanted.”
Nevertheless, over only a few years Colebank has earned the respect of tasters and experts, winning awards including the best single-cask release in Canada in 2024. De Kergommeaux says Stillhead’s rye is among the most interesting in the country.
“What I tell everyone is that I love scotch whisky, like single malts, but there’s tons of so many great ones on the shelf,” Colebank says. “I chose to make rye whisky but make it as good as a single malt, if not better. I really do believe that it can be just as good. It just needs to be treated the same way.”
