You can smell it 20 metres from the door. It’s surging out, loosed into the air: whisky, an invisible mist.
As you step closer you begin to feel it intensifying – the atmosphere seems to thicken like a shroud. With caution, you enter the warehouse, where the stench is so pungent you reflexively cover your nose. But it doesn’t make a difference. The air in this room doesn’t smell of whisky. The air in this room is whisky — so highly concentrated, and so noxious, that even an hour breathing it in would be fatal.
The whisky stings your eyes and smarts your lips. It caresses your skin and invades your pores. You walk slowly, alarmed and careful. You take every breath as if it were a highball poised to make you fabulously drunk.
This is a contemporary cask-storage warehouse at the Crown Royal Distillery in bucolic little Gimli, Manitoba, some 90 minutes outside of Winnipeg just along its eponymous lake. It’s one of nearly 50 such warehouses on the 360-acre property, which together house more than one and a half million 200-litre casks — with another thousand casks filled every day. A white-oak barrel will rest dormant for years in these facilities, aging. Its whisky will over time begin to seep out as vapour from the wood: this free-floating residue is known fondly as “the angels’ share.” But the angels’ share of several million barrels is too precious to forfeit – which is why the Crown Royal warehouses are built to keep all that leaking vapour in.
The result is a storehouse so astringent it could be deadly — and for visitors to the Distillery, an attraction like nothing else. Not that Crown Royal receives visitors in Gimli often. Unlike other distilleries, which regard whisky-loving sightseers as part of their daily operations, the Crown Royal Distillery does not offer regular guided tours or extravagant tasting excursions. It does not house an official Crown Royal gift shop. It does not welcome curious drop-ins or invite planned day-trips, and rarely do its front doors open to anybody not employed there. If it’s a spectacular monument or landmark you’re after this distillery will not oblige you. They make and store whisky here. That is, to the exclusion of pleasantries, pretty much all they do.
In 1968, the Distillery was founded under the aegis of Seagram’s, of which Crown Royal was at the time a subsidiary. Today it is owned by beverage mega-corporation Diageo, but is run more or less the same way. The facility still avails itself of 18,000 gallons of fresh water drawn daily from an aquifer that runs between Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba; the employees still distill 50 different whiskies with which they produce the signature Crown Royal blend; the warehouses still store authentic Canadian Whiskey, which is defined by law as any whisky made in this country that has been aged for a minimum of three years in a wood cask of not more than 700 litres. It is this constancy, the distillers maintain, that makes it possible for a bottle of Crown Royal in 2017 to taste precisely the same as it did when invented in 1939.
Machinery grinds through production 24 hours a day at the Gimli plant. Rye, corn, and malted barley are delivered by truck by days a week. Water in enormous quantities cooks the corn to prepare the mash. Big vats that look like mugs of frothy root beer fizz and bubble constantly: it’s the fermentation, churning madly for days until the yeast settles and dies — as meanwhile the room swelters with the heat of distillation in process. In less factory-like offices, a staff of super-judicious drinkers, equipped with some of the most sensitive palates on earth, review glass after glass of newly distilled whisky by scent and taste for quality control: the slightest variation from established formula and the batch is scotched.
Gimli is a town of 6000. It feels like — indeed it is — the middle of nowhere. And yet it is here, among endless stretches of emerald green, that more than 300 million litres of Crown Royal is diligently, scrupulously, patiently made.
Over the course of almost half a century, this vast flagship Distillery has continued to furnish the world with exquisite rye whisky, an endeavour that must surely qualify as noble. (A single glass is testament enough to this designation.) And while the facilities themselves may remain rather less than welcoming — while the great nauseating warehouses of vapour-shrouded barrel storage aggressively defy all attempts at tourism — the product yielded in privacy is worth it.
Perhaps what it takes to make alcoholic art is an air of seclusion and secrecy.
Truly a ROYAL drink. Some may like Bourbon, some prefer Scotch, others like Gin, even Vodka, but there is something really special about Canadian Crown Royal Rye Whisky. The purple soft cloth bag the bottle comes in is perfect for keeping my Scrabble tiles in, although I haven't found anyone here I can play the game with except an expat American and my score was double his, so he won't play me any more. Unfortunately I don't get visits from my brother and my nephew enough to be challenged these days. But this is an article about how Crown Royal is made so my Scrabble comments are off topic.
You should play Words with Friends.
My nephew plays Scrabble over the internet, but personally I would not want to because of the pressure.
You don't need to play with strangers. You can play with friends. I have a dozen games going on.
Yeah, I used to use Crown bags for Scrabble tiles, dice, and other assorted game related items, lol.
I can't say Crown is my favorite, but you definitely know you are going to get a good drink when you order Crown for sure.
The thing about the casks is interesting. I've seen smaller scale examples of that at the High West distillery.
What does HIgh West Distillery make?
Basically a variety of Bourbons and Rye Whiskeys, plus some other stuff as well.
Interesting. I didn't think they made rye whisky in the USA, just as they don't make bourbon in Canada.
Rye whiskey has made a big comeback in the US.
I've had that during my monthly trips to NM.
Yeah, they make some enjoyable beverages for sure.
When I was working with Epic Brewing and going through Cicerone certification training, we used High West's old casks for some Stouts. They were quite nice.
I hope Buzz gets some sort of monetary compensation for being a relentless shill for Canada. There is nothing else like it on this forum.
Don't think that John is being kind with that remark, everyone. He will find a "nice" way to criticize and censor many of my articles and comments on NT.
I only wish I could say the words to you that will get me banned from this site, John. I'm a Canadian, I created and administer the Canada group on NT, and if you don't stop censoring whatever I post on NT I will copy your style and do as you do, and seek out every possible way I can criticize and dirty the articles you post.