Sourced and blended whiskies might just be the next big trend in Canadian whisky. More and more of these sourced, non-distillery, bottlings keep popping up on the landscape.
After all, it takes a small fortune and several years to build, staff and launch a new distillery not to mention the lag time between the first run of spirit off the still and the requisite three years of waiting around for the liquid to age before it can legally be called "Canadian whisky."
Canadian brands like
Whistle Pig,
Signal Hill,
Twelve Barrels, and now Mark Anthony Brands'
Bearface Canadian whisky have bypassed the risk and sunk costs of operating their own distilleries and instead have sourced their whiskies from established Canadian producers. More than independent bottlers, these brands try to put their own spin on their sourced spirit through additional barrel finishing and blending.
Bearface is refreshingly upfront about its status as a sourced whisky, epitomized by it's "hide nothing, fear nothing" slogan. Using three types of casks in its production, Bearface is a single grain whisky that was first aged 7 years in ex-bourbon barrels "on the shores of Georgian Bay," before being shipped across the country to Mission Hill B.C. where it spent time in red wine casks made from French oak. But, for master blender Andres Faustinelli, that wasn't enough wood influence!
Something was missing, so the finishing touch was a few months in bespoke new Hungarian oak casks to add a "unique spice finish", before it was finally bottled at 42.5% ABV.
The whisky has a lovely reddish hue and the bottle packaging shows evidence of thoughtful and careful design touches from the Bearface branding on the cork and cap to the "claw marks" on the bottle and the "tear" out of the labelling.
It certainly looks nice but how does it taste?
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I am not that familiar with this name as I have never seen it in the market. However, I would love to give it a try as I have seen them on the internet a lot of different times.
Well-blended and interesting enough mixture of the Yamazaki and Hakushu flavour profiles (apricots, grass, something floral), but overly light and too marred by the grain. A higher abv and pure malt might go some way to correcting its failings. Not really worth getting over the rather superb individual malts, in fact a non-starter with the recent price inflation.
Hi there,
and yet something like a re-issue of the Allied Distillers Special Distillery Bottlings of 2002.
https://www.scotchwhiskyauctions.com/auctions/67_the-36th-auction/34492_allied-distillers-special-distillery-bottlings-x-6/
The entry to the pictures requires age confirmation.
Greetings
kallaskander