Meet Found North Whisky Canada. The Canadian Whisky not available to the Canadian buyer. Does that make me mad? Absolutely, however it also makes me happy because they are striving to “unlock the potential of Canadian distillate by creating unique, complex whiskies keyed to the American whiskey drinker’s palate and bottled with the Bourbon drinker’s mindset — undiluted, non-chill filtered and without additives”.
BOOM!. How can you not love that mission?
Heading North to Canada, Nick and Zach Taylor searched out mature distillates aged in our cold Canadian climate. Instead of finding ready-to-bottle single barrels, they discovers a vast array of cask teeming with potential. This created a rare opportunity to bring Canadian blending to the US market.
An extra special thanks to WhiskyTran. His generosity to provide me with a sample to try this whisky and write a review on is greatly appreciated. Bonus, he provided the great photos for this post and my Instagram.
Single Barrel | Season 001 | Barrel 001
Meet the inaugural single barrel. By the bottle: 204 bottle yield; new American Oak Char #3; 54.7% ABV (109.4 Proof); 66% Rye, 30% Corn, 4% Malted Barley; non-chill filtered; no additives; natural colour.
Found North’s single barrel program captures the precision of Canadian Whisky blending with the magic of selecting and bottling of a single barrel. Using well-aged whiskies they create an initial blend, then re-cask that blend into a variety of different barrels, oak types and char levels to create varying flavour profiles and unique style for each single barrel.
So what’s a season? From foundwhiskynorth.com: Each blend we create that transforms into a batch of single barrels constitutes a “Season.” Every subsequent round of single barrels we release will start with a new and different blend that can be identified by which “Season” is denoted on the label.
Season 1 started as a blend of 3 whiskies
- 50% 12 year old rye
- 20% 19 year old rye
- 30% 21 year old corn
blended and married in December 2021 and re-casked it in January 2022 into 18 barrels. End of the day, know that they put a lot of attention into the making of their whisky and Single Barrel releases.
Well, how is it?
When Danh told me he was sending a sample, I was extremely excited. I have read a lot of posts on the web and Instagram about people tasting and reviewing this whisky. One question came to mind though. This is a Canadian Whisky, we have a lot of great Canadian Whiskies here that we don’t let leave our country. Will this one stand up to those? Time to dive in and find out.
Nose: immediately this is old rye, caramel, chocolate, black cherries. I’m not finding any youthful rye notes. Diving deeper, sour apple with cinnamon spinkled on the slices.
Taste: there is not a hint that this sip is 54.7%. That is an achievement for a rye; no ethanol burn; it’s all flavour. It gives a generous oily mouth coating with cracked peppercorn spice. Moving into an array of burnt bacon in dark chocolate, rich oak, old leather and a hint of what I imagine the smoke from my smoker while using mesquite would taste like. As the sip ends, I’m presented with a sweeter oak spice and nutmeg with hints of cayenne pepper as it begins to dry the palate.
Finish: black pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg hug you in a nice gentle blanket for a decent amount of time, somewhere between a medium and long finish. The spicy oils stick to my inner cheeks with a wonderful savoury and sweet flavours.
Wrapping it all up
Having a chance to taste this whisky expression that is both sold out and unavailable in Canada is a special experience. A very well made rye whisky by any standards, but one that has been master fully blended together, takes this bottling to the next level. I would very much like to be able to find a whisky like this in Canada. It is both familiar and something I have not tasted before.
I’m looking forward to hopefully having the chance to find another expression or two from Found North Whisky the next time I’m in the U.S.
Where to find me? You can find me hanging out mostly on Instagram and at WhiskeySith.com.
Cheers,
Darryl