Canadian Club Chronicles Issue No. 3: The Speakeasy 43-Year-Old Whisky

Looking across the river from Windsor’s Hiram Walker Distillery, Detroit looks like a city where Batman might feel at home. Ornate skyscrapers line up against a landscape of 1920’s Art Deco buildings with gothic upper-story sculptural setbacks. It’s not Gotham, so, during American Prohibition, there were no actual Batman spottings here. Nevertheless, Bruce Wayne probably joined the thousands of Americans who flocked incognito across the Ambassador Bridge to hydrate with the water of Windsor – code for Canadian Club Whisky.

After releasing a 40-year-old Canadian Club in 2017, the brand introduced its Canadian Club Chronicles Series, beginning in 2018 with a 41-year-old whisky. It named that whisky “The Water of Windsor,” to chronicle that code. This whisky had been born back in 1977 when Hiram Walker employee Jack Farrell filled some recently emptied rye barrels with corn distillate. Years went by and every now and then a few barrels were drained, and their contents used to top up the others. This helped ease evaporation as they sat for four decades, soaking up the distillery’s history. Since 2018, each fall, Canadian Club has introduced another edition to the Chronicles Series to commemorate another chapter of this history.

Now, 2020 marks Canadian Club Chronicles Issue 3: The Speakeasy – a 43-year-old whisky with its own tale. Throughout American Prohibition, dockmen loaded crates of whisky onto freighters at Hiram Walker’s dock. If the paperwork was in order, anyone could load a ship with alcohol and set sail. Talented forgers would doctor paperwork, and the coastguard wouldn’t bat an eye. The boat would make a quick pitstop off the American shore to unload. From there the whisky quickly worked its way through underground distribution networks to be poured in illicit speakeasies in Detroit, Gotham and beyond. In these speakeasies, the already famous Canadian Club whisky gained even more renown.

The best part of this series is that the whisky chronicles a flavour story even more delicious than its astounding historical anecdotes. It’s a challenging task for a whisky to take you back to the future, but each year, here we are, enjoying another extraordinary Canadian Club. And The Speakeasy’s nose is precisely that. It speaks in flawless oak tones and murmured caramels setting up an easy-drinking palate. A hundred subtle flavours converge into a unified melting pot of orchard & dark fruits, and toffee & peppery spices that sit atop mellow but sturdy oak planks. A long finish then cascades from sweet to spicy to dry.

A tiny splash of eleven-year-old rye that was blended into the whisky brightens it up, but without covering it in frills and glitz. It’s an exercise in class where the integrity of the old whisky never wavers.

This limited-edition super-hero Canadian whisky was named Canada’s Best Whisky at the 2021 Canadian Whisky Awards. It lists at a suggested retail price of $320 and is bottled at 45%. You can learn more about Canada’s distilling traditions in our book, The Definitive Guide to Canadian Distilleries.