His name may lack the ring of a Jack Daniel or a Johnnie Walker, but John Hall may have done as much in five years to revive the dowdy Canadian whisky category as those legendary men did for bourbon and Scotch, at least while they were alive.
Not bad for a guy who considers himself more of a winemaker than a distiller.
Mr. Hall, 58, is founder and owner of Kittling Ridge Estate Wines & Spirits, a Grimsby-based company that bills itself as Ontario's fifth-largest vintner.
In recent years, though, whisky has been crowding out wine on his trophy mantel. Specifically Forty Creek Barrel Select Whisky, a premium brand aged for 10 years that Mr. Hall began distilling in 1992 on a whim and finally introduced in 2003. He describes it as his answer to the small-batch bourbons, such as Knob Creek and Maker's Mark, that have reinvigorated the U.S. whisky category.
"There were no artisan Canadian distillers, and I keep wondering why," Mr. Hall said. "That's what inspired me, because Canadian whisky is known all over the world."
Despite his lack of distilling experience, Mr. Hall's first batch of corn-rye-barley blend began pulling in accolades from international critics for its fruity, robust character - and for its reasonable price, $24.
Among his most notable fans is England's Jim Murray, who - notwithstanding a preference for a slightly less-fruity style - declares in the 2008 edition of his Whisky Bible, "Of all the world's distillers, there are few I hold in higher esteem than KR's John Hall."
A few months ago, Whisky Magazine, based in England, named Kittling Ridge Canada's distiller of the year and Mr. Hall the country's "whisky ambassador" of 2007.
New York-based Malt Advocate magazine anointed him "pioneer of the year" for 2006, making him the first Canadian to earn the title. And Forty Creek has also won best-in-class honours - the coveted double-gold medal - at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
"I believe that I have grown the category," Mr. Hall said. "I have brought new people into the Canadian whisky category because of Forty Creek."
The brand is now the fastest-growing Canadian whisky in North America (albeit starting from a small base compared with such giant labels as Canadian Club and Crown Royal). About 200,000 cases a year are snapped up as far away as Texas, Mr. Hall's biggest market outside Ontario.
To help ramp up production, next week he will christen a 50,000-square-foot addition to his 125,000-square-foot facility, mainly to accommodate more whisky barrels.
That success certainly stands in contrast to the rest of the category, especially familiar, big brands of regular-priced Canadian whisky, which many spirits aficionados dismiss as smooth to the point of innocuous. Some even dub it "brown vodka" because they consider it best mixed with pop or juice.
Standard-issue Canadian whisky has been in decline for years, a victim not only of a swing toward more robust brown spirits such as single-malt Scotch, but also of the vodka explosion. In 2006, the flavourless white spirit surpassed Canadian whisky as the top-selling liquor in Canada.
Still, Forty Creek Barrel Select isn't the only premium Canadian whisky to buck the trend. The premium side has been growing moderately, up about 4 to 6 per cent a year for the past few years. "People are drinking the premium side of the business," said Howard Kirke, vice-president of external affairs for Corby Distilleries Ltd., a Toronto-based company that makes Wiser's, Canada's bestselling family of whiskies.
The hottest sellers have been superluxury and limited-edition brands. Among the most recent: Wiser's Red Letter Whisky, a rich, $150 elixir launched in October. Released in honour of the 150th anniversary of Wiser's, it's aged for 10 years and "finished" for 150 days in new white-oak casks, the latter step adding body and hints of vanilla and spice.
Also playing to favourable reviews is Crown Royal Cask No. 16, a $99 limited-edition blend finished in French oak casks that previously contained cognac. And certainly worth the money is the much less expensive, and excellent, Centennial 10-year-old, a rye-and-wheat whisky from another independent distiller, Alberta-based Highwood. It costs about $25.
It may be a stretch to grant Mr. Hall all the credit for Canada's quiet resurgence in the whisky world. Corby preceded Forty Creek with a line of three very good small-batch brands, Lot No. 40, Pike Creek and Gooderham & Worts, collectively known as the Canadian Whisky Guild and regrettably no longer available.
But competitors say his small-scale, artisanal approach and impressive international acclaim are helping raise awareness for the entire category. "This is the way the business started 150, 200 years ago, and it's great to see contemporary distillers exploring methods used by their forefathers to increase consumers' interest in the category," Mr. Kirke said.
A Windsor, Ont., native, Mr. Hall certainly didn't start out like most predecessors in the whisky business. With a diploma in chemistry and microbiology, he landed a job on a tasting panel for Campbell's soup. "Little did I know that that was going to develop my palate," he said. That led to a 19-year career with Labatt's former wine division, where he went from winemaker to vice-president and general manager for Ontario, eventually assisting in a management-led buyout of the division.
In 1992, he cashed out and bought struggling Rieder distillery in Grimsby with plans to use the fermenting equipment for wine. But the fascinating copper stills and abundant local grain proved too alluring. "What the distilling side gave me was this whole new canvas to paint on."
Borrowing a page from his winemaker's handbook, Mr. Hall, rather than mixing rye, corn and barley together, decided to ferment, distill and age them separately. That's how winemakers typically do it, vinifying each grape variety individually to optimize characters, then blending at the end.
The result is a whisky that marries the qualities of fruity Canadian rye with the sweetness of a corn-based bourbon-style spirit and the nuttiness of Scottish-style barley whisky.
Mr. Hall also borrowed a Scotch warehousing technique, aging the components for up to 10 years (compared with the minimum three required for Canadian whisky) in American oak casks and then transferring the final product to used sherry casks for six months of "finishing." Leaning on his wine instincts again, instead of sourcing expensive sherry wood from Spain, he made his own ersatz Canadian-style "sherry" mainly so he could later use the infused casks for the whisky.
"I don't know of anybody else who is making three distinct whiskies, aging them separately and then blending them together," said Stephen Beaumont, a Toronto-based beer and spirits writer for several international publications who is a big fan of Forty Creek. Mr. Beaumont said he is conducting a public whisky-and-cheese tasting in Toronto in March and has been promoting it as "featuring probably the best whisky value at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, and that is Forty Creek."
The accolades, apparently, keep coming.
bcrosariol@globeandmail.com
