These six distilleries have more in common than the fact they’ve all been named Canada’s best in their categories at the 2025 World Whiskies Awards. From the Rocky Mountains to Vancouver Island and the Prairies to the Okanagan, they’re each a distinct expression of passion and place.
In the face of tariff threats from the United States — and retaliatory tariffs and restrictions on the sale of U.S. alcohol — more Canadians are buying local than ever before. New Leger polling shows that 71 per cent of Canadians say they have shopped local more in the past few weeks.
These top-tier Canadian whiskies could soon be more widely available than ever.
ANOHKA DISTILLERY
Gurpreet Ranu, a master distiller, lawyer and particle physicist, came up with a somewhat cheeky name for Anohka Distillery‘s unaged spirit. In Canada, whisky must be aged for at least three years to meet the legal definition. “I wanted to find a way to communicate that this is not our finished product yet,” says Ranu. This is Not Whisky encapsulated it. (Anohka’s whisky, name undetermined, is still aging.)
Made with barley grown on a 110-acre farm in Alberta’s Parkland County, 40 kilometres west of Edmonton, Anohka’s This is Not Whisky has won best Canadian New Make & Young Spirit three years in a row at the World Whiskies Awards. Judges also named it the world’s best in the category last year, which Ranu hopes will happen again when the global winners are announced on March 26.
“This type of global recognition, the fact that our whisky is really quite delicious, is an opportunity for us, along with other producers across the country who are doing similar things, to put Canadian whisky back on the map as a serious contender and a category that should be taken seriously,” says Ranu.
He credits his not-quite-whisky’s success to the flavours Anohka achieves using high-tech and old-school methods. “We take a very Canadian approach to things because we aren’t bound by any of the tradition or lore that some of our Scottish or Irish competitors might be bound by. And so we’re able to be a lot more creative.”
On the innovation side, Anohka uses recent advancements in yeast breeding and a state-of-the-art Meura mash filter, which allows the extraction of more concentrated flavour from the grain while reducing its energy and water footprint by roughly 30 per cent compared to traditional brewing methods. On the other end of the spectrum, their copper pot stills heated by a direct flame — “a 1,000-litre Molotov cocktail” — are as old-school as they get.
“Instead of heating (our stills) with steam, like everybody else, we light a giant fire under the pot. And that fire creates these flavour compounds that used to exist in all whiskies, probably 150 years ago when everybody was using fire,” says Ranu.
Today, the complexity, depth and sweetness it achieves is rare. “That’s what I think makes us rise above.”
MERRIDALE CIDERY AND DISTILLERY
Whisky Jack’s is a testament to parental love. Janet Docherty and Rick Pipes, founders of Merridale Cidery and Distillery in Cobble Hill on Vancouver Island, created it as a tribute to their late fathers — both Jacks who appreciated whisky. After starting with cider in 1999, Merridale moved into spirits, beginning with brandy. Whisky Jack’s was their first whisky, made with organic malted barley from B.C.’s North Okanagan, distilled in 2007 and matured for more than seven years in French oak casks.
“We wanted to express the ingredients that we have here and let those come out. But also, the more subtle part of it is what both of our dads loved, which was that mellowness to it. Because of spending time in the barrels and the type of barrels we used, it gave it a nice, smooth mouthfeel,” says Docherty, Merridale’s owner and “chief disruptor.”
The limited-edition, sold-out whisky was named the best Canadian Small Batch Single Malt at this year’s World Whiskies Awards. Docherty credits her team, including winemaker, master distiller and blender Laurent Lafuente, and attributes the win to the attention given to the character of small-batch whiskies. “It was loved all the way through — on all levels. On scientific levels, on tasting and the story.”
Merridale became B.C.’s first certified craft distillery in 2013 and is dedicated to using 100 per cent local ingredients. Believing that whisky should be aged in a non-controlled, unadulterated environment, Docherty says the Cowichan Valley’s short, dry summers and long, wet winters give it a unique style.
“We have that benefit of the Mediterranean climate, and we rely on what’s happening in the natural climate instead of trying to force things with chemical bases to push things along. We honour nature and work with nature.”
Docherty considers Canada’s diversity its strength in the world of whisky. “Canada is very capable. Canada can do these things where we weren’t on the map before. Canada is a very large country with many different flavours, and it can be a wide array of different types of whisky — not defined by a particular type — because we are large and have so much to bring to the table.”
Whisky Jack’s sold quickly, and the small amount kept in the vault for special occasions is long gone. But happily, Merridale is three years into making whisky again. “We trust this whisky will also be a true reflection of the Cowichan Valley and a tribute to our family that made it.”
MACALONEY’S ISLAND DISTILLERY
At Macaloney’s Island Distillery, the still room is complete with a spirit safe, to which founder Graeme Macaloney holds the key. Until the ‘80s in his native Scotland, that responsibility would have gone to the U.K.’s equivalent of Revenue Canada. Local officers from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs would have had access to each distillery’s safe to monitor the amount of spirit produced and ensure there weren’t any tax-evasion shenanigans.
“Makes a great story for the tours,” he says on a video call from his Saanich distillery on Vancouver Island.
Macaloney points out a 5,500-litre copper wash still and a 3,600-litre pot still in the background, unusually large for a North American distiller. But Macaloney’s isn’t just any distiller. Four of its Peat Project whiskies were named Canada’s best at this year’s World Whiskies Awards in categories including Single Malt and Pot Still, and its Peat Project Moscatel Barrique single malt won Canadian Whisky of the Year at the 2025 Canadian Whisky Awards.
Since Macaloney’s started competing in 2020, only three distilleries have won more gold medals at the World Whiskies Awards, says Macaloney, who has a PhD in fermentation engineering: Glen Scotia in Scotland, Teeling in Ireland and Kavalan Distillery in Taiwan.
The recognition is “flabbergasting,” says Macaloney, and makes all the dreaming and planning he’s been doing since 2012 worthwhile.
Macaloney’s inspiration with the Peat Project was to make “the connoisseurs’ ultimate” — peat whiskies. The peat comes from the Olympic Peninsula, less than 100 kilometres from Victoria by ferry. Other ingredients like sugar kelp are harvested in nearby Barkley Sound. To learn the “dying art” of peat smoking, he visited the few distilleries in Islay, Scotland, that still do it.
“I’m big about traditional methods. So yes, we have innovation, but it’s all grounded in tradition — making traditional methods better and staying within that traditional envelope. I wanted to be the first distillery outside of that handful to do commercial-scale peat smoking,” says Macaloney. “I studied with that scientific, engineering mind. What is that smoking process, and how can I set it up in Canada? And so, I brought the concept back.”
Macaloney had a peat-smoking unit built within six weeks with his cousin-in-law Doug, an Alberta farmer, hauled over the Rocky Mountains on a trailer and across the Georgia Strait by ferry. “We fired this thing up. We smoked it through the traditional Laphroaig method, but using local ingredients — Canadian barley, which is way better than that Scottish crap,” says Macaloney. “That’s a wee bit like Mike Myers flipping it around. ‘If it’s not Canadian, it’s crap,’ is what we can say now.”
GRAINHENGE WHISKY
Based in Red Deer, Alta., GrainHenge is an homage to the monuments of the Prairies. Elevators and mills define the landscape as much as the vast fields of grain. “We don’t have thousand-year-old Stonehenges, but we do have these monoliths on the Prairies that brought people together, where they could share their goods and stories. So we’re hoping that the whisky is doing that as well,” says head distiller Garret Haynes.
GrainHenge’s celebrated Arrowwood won best Canadian rye at the 2025 World Whiskies Awards. In 2024, it won Rye Whisky of the Year, among other honours, at the Canadian Whisky Awards. Haynes considers it a testament to the grain’s beauty, especially given rye’s strong reputation in Canada.
Traditionally, Canadian rye whisky involves various grains aged separately and blended together. For Arrowwood, GrainHenge aged 100 per cent rye in a single vessel. The result shows a softer side of the grain that often goes unrecognized, says Haynes. “People call it spicy or grassy, but there’s also a sweet, almost candy note to it.”
From the water coming off the Rocky Mountains to the grain growing all around them, GrainHenge’s Prairie setting greatly influences its approach — as does the fact that it’s been brewing craft beer for nearly a decade at Troubled Monk. It uses the same specialty malts created by Alberta maltsters and translates recipes it might use for beer. Whisky releases such as the award-winning Meeting Creek and Elevator Row took inspiration directly from Troubled Monk’s brown and pale ales.
Haynes says it comes down to listening to your ingredients and making a whisky as cohesive and delicious as possible. He’s excited about a future project showcasing the terroir of whisky, tracing it back to a single field or the same grain grown in different parts of the province to show how provenance affects the flavour.
“In Red Deer, we have the fields of barley, wheat and rye all around us, and we’ve got some incredible maltsters within a short drive from where we are. That’s an amazing opportunity, and it feels like a responsibility to use it and to show what can be grown right in our backyard.”
BEARFACE
A repurposed shipping container may not be the first vessel that comes to mind for housing whisky casks, but that’s precisely what Bearface master blender Andres Faustinelli conceptualized in 2016. His “elemental aging” technique involves dropping shipping containers among the trees, exposing the casks to the natural environment rather than a controlled warehouse.
“We let the season shape the whisky, and then we have to work on blending it to get back to the same profile,” says Faustinelli. “The beauty is not a whisky by recipe. It’s a real whisky shaped by weather.”
He chose B.C.’s Okanagan Valley for roughly 12 of Bearface’s shipping containers because of the temperature extremes, which he says is also why the region is ideal for winemaking. There are also four in Chatham-Kent, Ont., “the corn basket of Bearface.”
Bearface Elementally Aged Triple Oak was named Canada’s best in the corn category at this year’s World Whiskies Awards. Since launching in 2018, the whisky has also won a double gold medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition for four years running.
The whisky is aged in three oak barrels — ex-bourbon American casks, former French red wine casks and toasted Hungarian casks — which Faustinelli explains is also relatively new. “Usually, a triple oak is three different casks blended. This is not. This is a travelling whisky.”
Faustinelli was born in Venezuela and grew up in Italy. “For me, falling in love with whisky was falling in love with Canada. They are totally connected because the whisky regulatory space in Canada is the perfect canvas for creation.”
Faustinelli says whisky is a traditional category, and the regulations are stricter in most other parts of the world. In Canada, rules relate to the minimum aging period and the volume of the wooden container the spirit is aged in, but that’s it. “The space for innovation is huge.”
The Wilderness Series also gives Faustinelli space to explore. Wild Air, a new limited release and Bearface’s third, incorporates birch bark to char an ex-viognier cask for a botanical, leathery note and maple water from the Gaspé Peninsula.
The scratches etched into the Bearface bottle also tell a story. “it’s really about breaking and entering into a category that was so defined by tradition,” says Faustinelli. “I hate snobbiness in whisky, so I wanted something young with energy that dares to go to places that usually whisky brands wouldn’t go.”
WILD LIFE DISTILLERY
Wild Life Distillery is rooted in the lifestyle and adventure of Alberta’s Bow Valley. For co-founders Keith Robinson and Matt Widmer, using local raw materials was the goal from the beginning. “What do we have right here at home? We have grain. We have water. That’s two of the most important things to make great spirits, so we decided to focus on that,” says Widmer.
Wild Life Wheat Whisky was named Canada’s best at the 2025 World Whiskies Awards and earned the Mixed Mash Whisky of the Year title at the Canadian Whisky Awards in January. Its rye whisky won gold at both awards and single malt at the Canadian Whisky Awards.
The spirits industry is competitive, says Widmer. When Wild Life started eight years ago, it was the sixth craft distillery in the province. Now, there are more than 60. “The ace up our sleeve is process and authenticity. We’re just real people producing real products from local agriculture in the mountains.”
Wild Life started with vodka and used the sales to buy grain and equipment for making whisky. “It was a commitment to the process, a commitment to the long game, a commitment to making a Canadian, Albertan product that we were proud to produce.”
Widmer sees flavour as the differentiator in Wild Life’s whiskies, which comes down to their decisions at each step — from selecting raw materials to fermentation, distilling and aging.
Whisky presents endless opportunities, says Widmer. The grain is slightly different each year, and there are nuances in casks and terroir. “That same spirit on Day 1 versus year three, four, five, six — it’s constantly evolving. So it’s a very dynamic process.”
This variability makes it challenging to produce the same product on a small scale, so instead, they celebrate the individuality of each batch or release. “There’s no end game to whisky. It could be 30 years from now, and we now have 35-year-old barrels sitting in the warehouse. It’s fun. And it’s a blend of art and science, creativity and passion and things that we love to play with, which keeps us fuelled.”
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