Purple reign It’s total Crown captivation for spirited collectors of the Gimli-produced whisky and anything related to it By: David Sanderson Posted: 2:00 AM CDT Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024

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This article was published 19/10/2024 (353 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We begin by raising a glass to Crown Royal, the Gimli-produced whisky that this year celebrated a pair of impressive milestones.

For starters, it’s been 85 years since the blended spirit was unveiled in 1939, to mark a royal visit to Canada by King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth. Secondly, it was 60 years ago when Crown Royal first became available for purchase in the United States, where it continues to be the top-selling brand of Canadian whisky. (Earlier this month, Crown Royal introduced its oldest whisky to date in regions south of the border, an exclusive offering dubbed Crown Royal Aged 31 Years that carries a sobering price tag of US$599 per 750-ml bottle.)

Crown Royal-memorabilia collector Marc Andre would love to join us in a toast, only there’s one teensy problem: the 36-year-old isn’t planning to break the seal any time soon on dozens of bottles of Crown Royal he stores in a dust-proof display cabinet in his rural Manitoba home.

“Another collector I know once compared scarce bottles of Crown to commodities like gold and silver, in that they’re either going to retain their value, or it’s going to increase,” Andre says, cradling a limited-edition bottle of Crown Royal that hit store shelves in 2021 to commemorate the movie première of Coming 2 America, the sequel to 1988’s Coming To America that starred Eddie Murphy as the crown prince of a fictional African nation.

“My buddies are always bugging me to bring out some of my rarer stuff, to see how good it tastes, but I’m like, yeah, that’s never going to happen.”

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Andre guesses he was 18 years old when he took his first sip of Crown Royal, likely at a wedding social where he would have paired it with Coke. Over time it became his alcoholic beverage of choice, a habit that was reinforced once he learned it was distilled 45 minutes from his front door.

“I was probably in my early 20s when a friend of mine clued me in about the Gimli connection and I remember thinking, wow, how cool is that?” says Andre, who presently takes his whisky neat, or with a splash of water.

He was still living with his parents 12 years ago when he came across an image of a high-back throne chair with the Crown Royal insignia stitched into the upholstery, which the company had been stationing in liquor stores and licensed premises across the country as a promotional device. A few were popping up for sale here and there and he promised himself that as soon as he had a place of his own, he’d save his pennies to buy one for a proposed man cave.

As luck would have it, one came available four years ago in Calgary, not far from where his brother lived. The asking price was fairly steep, but after some negotiating, he and the chair’s owner reached an agreement. His brother scooped it up and when he came to visit that summer, he brought it with him in the back of his pickup truck.

So, did Andre proceed to park his derrière in it at every opportunity, to enjoy a movie or watch a sporting event on a wall-mounted big-screen TV? Not so much. He sheepishly admits to hiring a labourer to construct a lockable, five-foot-tall by two-foot-wide Plexiglas casing to ensure the chair, which, like Crown Royal’s iconic cloth bags, is purple in colour, remained perfectly intact.

“After getting it here, I began to think how I didn’t really want my two cats scratching the heck out of it, so even though it looks pretty comfortable to sit in, it’s never been used it for that purpose.”

Andre, who dabbles in a number of fields professionally, never considered himself much of a collector-type. Sure, he kept hockey cards when he was young, but that would have been about it. Except as he became more and more fascinated by the sheer amount of Crown Royal-related merchandise out there — not just the liquor itself, but also officially-licensed poker chips, fishing lures, barbecue tools… even battery-powered miniature train sets — he slowly but surely began converting his rec room into a shrine to his favourite hooch.

During the last 12 months, he admittedly went a “little crazy,” purchasing everything from Crown Royal hockey gloves to a mini-basketball net to a Game of Thrones-style wall banner. Additionally, he now has a never-to-be-used golf bag and a never-to-be-played air-hockey game, the latter of which he keeps covered with — natch — a Crown Royal blanket.

“It’s not like a lot of this stuff is super-expensive. It’s just that you can’t walk down the street and buy it from Wal-Mart or wherever,” he explains. “Almost all of it would have originally been in a bar or an LC, so when it comes up for sale, I feel like I better grab it, because it might be years before I see it again.”

Greg Moore is the administrator of a Facebook group comprised of Crown Royal collectors from all over the globe.

The 66-year-old former Chrysler employee, who has been drinking Crown Royal since he was legally allowed to (“and probably a bit before that”), moved to Detroit in 2008 from his native St. Louis for work purposes. Because all his friends and family were back in Missouri, he started tossing around ideas for a hobby, owing to the amount of idle time he had on his hands.

“I can’t really remember why I settled on Crown, but I can tell you that I started with older bottles, though I had a hard-and-fast rule: anything I got I had to buy two of — one for collecting purposes and one for me to crack open,” he says over the phone, noting that because it’s technically illegal to ship alcohol through the U.S. mail, he may or may not have signed for packages marked “maple syrup” or “snow globes,” at one time or another.

Moore presently crams upwards of 50 cases of Crown Royal bottles into his one-bedroom apartment, but that’s nothing compared to other collections, he says. One member of the Facebook group, whose online handle is “Brian Tex,” has turned his house into a veritable Crown Royal museum. There, interested parties can make an appointment to view an eye-popping array of paraphernalia, including a wall covered almost entirely with Crown Royal clocks and mirrors, and an area housing all manner of Crown apparel, including racing jackets, sunglasses, cowboy boots and belt buckles.

“I’d venture to say he’s spent over $2 million on Crown items, and he’s still posting new pictures almost every week,” Moore says, mentioning some people specialize in miniature, 50-ml bottles or in vessels carrying tax stamps over the lid, which was the norm until 1985.

And while so-called holy grails differ from collector to collector, Moore says his main target is a bottle topped with a bright-purple cap that was only available in the Great White North.

“It came out in the 1940s or thereabouts, and an unopened specimen fetches as much as $4,000 American, when it comes up for auction,” he says. “I’m also interested in what’s called a legacy bottle that was only given to Gimli employees. There’s apparently one guy who worked there who bought quite a few from his co-workers, and he’s been selling them for between $1,200 and $1,500, a piece.”

Both Moore and Andre would love to visit the Gimli distillery, where 46 separate warehouses reportedly house about 1.4 million casks. Alas, it’s Andre’s understanding that public tours were discontinued about 10 years ago.

“I’m dying to go, and I’ve heard that one group that does get access is liquor-store employees, so that might be an avenue to pursue,” he says with a wink.

In the meantime, he’ll continue to keep his eyes open for hit-list items such as a Crown Royal acoustic guitar, graphite hockey stick and six-person poker table. That said, there is a limit to what he can bring home.

“I have a very understanding girlfriend whose rule is that I can buy whatever I want, so long as it all stays down here,” he says with a laugh. “I am slowly running out of room, though, so a larger house is probably in our future.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca