Once again, Victoria was home to the country’s largest event celebrating the caramel-coloured booze that helped define the 19th and early 20th centuries. On Thursday, Jan. 15, the Canadian Whisky Awards were held at Hotel Grand Pacific, recognizing the top distillers within the nuanced world of the highly esteemed canuck-made drink. “Canadian distilleries, large and small, are really doing things that were unheard of, even 15 years ago,” said Davin de Kergommeaux, founder of the awards and Canadian whisky expert. Canadian whisky is more regulated compared to other countries, especially our American counterparts, in that the federal Food and Drugs Act requires liquor labelled as ‘Canadian whisky’ to be mashed, distilled and aged in Canada, to be aged in wood vessels for at least three years, and it must contain at least 40 per cent alcohol by volume. It must also taste like Canadian whisky, which, according to de Kergommeaux, means a caramel taste at the beginning, pepper in the middle, pith at the end, and “10,000 other things hung on that.” The 2026 Canadian whisky of the year was J.P. Wiser’s 24 Year Old Canadian Whisky, a spirit that was slowly matured across multiple casks with noted of cherry and vanilla flavours. Among the other winners was the Saanich-based Macaloney’s Distillery’s Peat Project: Harvest Coast, which was named the single malt whisky of the year. Last year, Macaloney’s took four gold medals at the World Whiskies Awards and was named Canadian Whisky of the Year at the 2025 Canadian Whisky Awards. A fan favourite was Wild Life Distillery’s WLD Cask King of the North, a whisky which was distilled with Alberta Rye, chill filtered, and aged for four years in a barrel that once held peated single malt whisky and Canadian maple syrup. “Sometimes you find a whisky that is so beautifully integrated that it doesn’t taste like anything more than itself,” de Kergommeaux told a crowd at a preview whisky tasting, speaking on the Wild Life submission. “It’s just really the very best whisky.”
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