Canadian Club 40 Year Old

@talexander, another rare gem, moderation, please! I owe a debt of gratitude to you and @Nozinan for finding this one for me. Definitely the oldest single grain whisky I have tried. To my great delight this was being bottled when I visited the Hiram Walker Distillery in September 2017...and to my great disappointment when I realised I couldn't sample nor purchase this legendary Canadian release on that day.

I have blended this one with Lot No. 40 Cask Strength...yes, I blended a 40 YO rare whisky...because I do shit like that...and it is sensational. For those who dare to attempt this exercise, I recommend a ratio of 91:9 CC40 to Lot No. 40 Cask Strength. Hind sight is 40/40

@paddockjudge You are a brave and unique soul, my friend. I'm only on a roll tonight because I wanted to get these Canadians off my plate before I do a few Irish during the lead-up to St. Patrick's Day.

@paddockjudge it's ok if you blend this whisky, as long as you don't blend it with ginger ale.

@Nozinan Hmmmm.....gives me an idea or two...

Those darn warehouse men, forgetting casks for decades at a time again. When will they ever learn?

Well, this is according to the brand ambassador - and we all know brand ambassadors always stick to the facts!

@talexander @MadSingleMalt It’s not like salesmen, er “brand ambassadors”, can just make up stories in order to sell more whisky. Thanks for this review. I was really hoping to get a bottle of this and Wiser’s 35, but I couldn’t , so I’m glad to live vicariously through you. Sounds great.

@OdysseusUnbound Well, stories are made up all the time, or at least greatly embellished. "Our Master Distillery miraculously found 40 year old casks slumbering in the back of the warehouse" doesn't really mean anything...

@talexander, well sure we know that yarns like that are BS. But they're not in the same boat as meaningless superlatives like "Ireland's best whisky!" that are explicitly recognized by everyone as meaningless indeed‡. These are actual claims about a whisky's source. And they're almost surely false.

At least other origin stories about tornadoes and blizzards and whatever else are true, even if they're dumb. These "forgotten casks" stories are clearly BS, and the people telling them to us are goddamned liars.

‡ By that, I refer to false advertising laws, which I'm pretty sure are not applicable to "World's Best X!"-style claims.

@MadSingleMalt When they say something like "Our Master Distiller miraculously found 40 year old casks slumbering in the back of the warehouse", it's probably not 100% false. It could just really mean "So our intern was digitizing some records and he found a binder that fell behind the coffee machine, which noted some casks that the alcoholic warehouse manager at the time forgot to write down, so we checked them out and they were, like 40-42 years old." The second statement doesn't negate the first statement, it's all in the wording.

@talexander

A quick Google tells me they put out 7000 bottles of this, at $250 CAD. Does that sound about right?

If so, they want us to believe they just "lost track" of over $1.7 million dollars' worth of whisky until the intern found a binder or whatever?

Don’t get me wrong; I love me some backstories. They just can’t be taken seriously. But these stories are often repeated as gospel by folks who are not as obsessed (i.e. folks who have a more “sane” relationship with uisge beatha) by whisky as the folks here.

Barrels don't get tired, they keep on giving, all they need is time. Give a cask enough time and it will yield a light coloured masterpiece such as this CC 40 YO.

@MadSingleMalt No, they don't want you to believe over a million dollars of whisky was found due to an intern finding a binder. I'm the one who wants you to believe over a million dollars of whisky was found due to an intern finding a binder! IT'S TRUE I SWEAR ON MY MACALLAN 25!

@paddockjudge I'm still not sure I get the "casks don't get tired" thing. I need third-party verification. Lemme give Bill Lumsden a quick call.

@talexander, well since you mention it, where did the "casks discovered in a forgotten corner of the warehouse" notion come from?

@MadSingleMalt That's what the brand ambassador for Canadian Club said at a tasting.