Bridgeland Distillery Taber Corn Berbon

Taber corn is second to none. So much so that had God delivered his 10 Commandments on an Alberta mountain top, he would have declared, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s corn.” Each summer, when word of Taber, Alberta’s first corn harvest breaks, connoisseurs converge on roadside stands like voracious crows, there to pillage the southern Alberta landscape. Skid marks leading away from abandoned stands tell those who know that whatever Taber corn was sold here is gone for the season. 

This is not a new phenomenon. In the 1930s, broom squires boasted that they made their wares with Taber corn. In the 1940s, Olivia de Havilland celebrated her Oscar wins and Golden Globes by visiting the region incognito, as “Mrs. Hill.” Canny news reporters in a pre-paparazzi era told breathless tales of the Hollywood icon feasting on Taber corn. By the 1990s, counterfeiting the golden ears had become so widespread that growers established a certificate system to assure consumers that corn labelled with the “T” word was the real deal. Today, the word Taber has maize gourmands in places like New York City worshipping cobs like graven images. 

Making Taber Berbon 

In Calgary, those familiar Taber highway skid marks now appear in front of Calgary’s Bridgeland distillery. There they make a spirit called Taber Corn Berbon, proving that now you can eat your Taber corn and drink it too.

"Mashing, fermenting and distilling a bourbon-style spirit is quite complex and technical, especially considering it is all done in small batches in a pot still,” says Bridgeland’s Jacques Tremblay. “Barrel ageing imparts roughly two-thirds of the flavour and aroma to the end product,” he continues, “we wanted to make things right before releasing it." That is why he and Daniel Plenzik chose new American oak barrels to mature their Berbon. 

The farmer’s fields that surround the small town of Taber are ideal for growing corn. This is indeed a special spot to grow the sweet golden grain with healthy, sandy soils, perfect irrigation, and sweltering summer heat. The mash for Bridgeland’s Taber Corn Berbon includes 60% Taber corn, along with 32% barley and 8% wheat from up the road in Penfold Alberta.

Buttery corn cobs and sweet caramel leap from the nose with touches of peppery lumber and spiced vanilla. Black pepper surges forward with young wood and sizzling hot, grassy spice that speaks loud and clear on the palate. Cereal notes and the warmth of freshly charred oak stay on the finish long enough to declare Berbon a strong force in the New Testament of Canadian Spirits.

A Taber Berbon Spelling Bee

In the days of the steam locomotive, Taber was a railway fill station known as Tank No. 77. That did not change until 1907, when a post office was built. The Canadian Pacific Railway named the tiny hamlet Tabor. Some claim the name came from the Holy Land’s Mount Tabor; others swear Mormon settlers pulled the word from “tabernacle.” Regardless, there was no spell-check back then, so when postal station letterheads were printed as “Taber,” the CPR changed Tabor’s spelling to match official records. 

Bridgeland’s Jacques Tremblay and Daniel Plenzik may not be International Spelling Bee champions, but calling their spirit Berbon was intentional.

At one time, every distillery in Canada made and sold bourbon. And, as whisky makers tended to their flock of barrels, American distillers gave little more than a shrug when the name Bourbon was uttered on Canadian Holy soil. Indeed, US distillers occasionally purchased bulk Canadian bourbon to supplement their own dwindling stocks - a process utterly oblivious to a dot on a map. 

John F. Kennedy was assassinated late in 1963, opening a door for Lyndon B. Johnson’s Cold War policies. On May 4, 1964, government specialists arrived, determined to carve their own commandments into whisky’s stone tablets. They were obsessed with geographical designations, and suddenly everything changed. Certain foods and drinks became intellectual property, owned by specific places. Without batting an eye, Canadian trade negotiators let bourbon slip away, agreeing it was a distinctive United States product. (We contacted Johnson through an Ouija board to confirm our conspiracy theory. His response was, “GHKL, Good Bye.”) 

Today, when Canadian distillers make bourbon, they get creative, naming it “bourbon style,” “BRBN,” or “Berbon.” The “Ber” in Berbon, by the way, invokes the ‘ber’ in Taber. Bridgeland may not even want to use the name “Bourbon,” but for the spirit fan, nothing is getting in the way of calling it a near-religious experience. And those who have tried it, say Amen to that.

Davin de Kergommeaux and Blair Phillips are the authors of The Definitive Guide to Canadian Distilleries.