Manitoba-made Crown Royal crowned whisky of the year

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Crown Royal has once again nabbed some serious hardware for their Manitoba-made whisky.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/01/2022 (1711 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Crown Royal has once again nabbed some serious hardware for their Manitoba-made whisky.

The Gimli-based distillery, owned by international drinks giant Diageo, took the whisky of the year awards at the 2022 Canadian Whisky Awards for the Crown Royal Noble Collection Winter Wheat. The whisky, which retails for $89.99 at Liquor Marts but is currently sold out, also won the award for best blended whisky and sipping whisky of the year at the competition, now in its twelfth year.

The winning dram was distilled at Diageo’s Gimli-based distillery, where all Crown Royal whiskies are made, and blended in Diageo’s facility in Montreal.

“This is a truly stunning whisky,” said Davin de Kergommeaux, head judge and founder of the awards and a leading writer on spirits in Canada, in a blog post at canadianwhisky.org, calling the Winter Wheat “incredibly complex, flavourful and well-balanced.” In addition to the Winter Wheat, Crown Royal’s Noble Collection Rye – Aged 16 Years, the Extra Rare 18-Year-Old and the XO were all awarded gold medals.

The competition also awarded Diageo’s Gimli facility with the distillery of the year award, while Crown Royal blender Joanna Zanin Scandella received a lifetime achievement award. “Crown Royal invented the way Canadians blend whisky and it is Canada’s most popular whisky by far,” wrote de Kergommeaux in the blog post about the competition. “Consumers buy more per year than the next 6 brands combined.”

In 2016, Crown Royal was awarded Whisky of the Year by Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible for their Northern Harvest Rye, beating out hundreds of other brands and marking the first time a Canadian whisky had ever taken the award.

ben.sigurdson@winnipegfreepress.com

Ben Sigurdson

Ben Sigurdson
Literary editor, drinks writer

Ben Sigurdson is the Free Press‘s literary editor and drinks writer. He graduated with a master of arts degree in English from the University of Manitoba in 2005, the same year he began writing Uncorked, the weekly Free Press drinks column. He joined the Free Press full time in 2013 as a copy editor before being appointed literary editor in 2014. Read more about Ben.

In addition to providing opinions and analysis on wine and drinks, Ben oversees a team of freelance book reviewers and produces content for the arts and life section, all of which is reviewed by the Free Press’s editing team before being posted online or published in print. It’s part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.

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