{"id":335,"date":"2010-09-16T11:52:39","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T16:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/?p=335"},"modified":"2012-05-01T10:20:09","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T15:20:09","slug":"white-owl-whisky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/?p=335","title":{"rendered":"White Owl Whisky"},"content":{"rendered":"
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White Owl - some say it's a whisper in the darkness; others find it a hoot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Everyone loves anomalous spirits \u2013 by which I mean, of course, that I do. In a couple of weeks a new Canadian whisky is being released in Ontario unlike any Canadian whisky hitherto seen. It\u2019s a blended 10-year-old based on a wheat-and-rye distillation mash and it is as clear and colourless as vodka. According to the press releases from Highwood Distillers, the privately owned distillery in Calgary, the finished, blended whisky is run through a micro-carbon filtration five times to strip out the colour as well as congeners and \u201cimpurities.\u201d<\/p>\n

What they don\u2019t say is what kind of colour was there to begin with. There is precious little oakiness in the nose of this intriguing drink, which leads me to think its ten years of ageing may have been in something other than a traditional cask. Unless those aromas have also been stripped out of the spirit. What it does smell like is vodka \u2013 but a northern European vodka with plenty of clean grainy character and an added touch of anise, a trace of vanilla, a hint of the sort of stemmy perfume you get from a bunch of odourless white flowers early in the year. On the palate, it\u2019s smooth and quite rich. In the initial seconds en bouche<\/em> I find myself waiting for the sweet grainy flavour of genever gin to kick in \u2013 or even the oily, sweaty hit of a decent poteen \u2013 but there\u2019s nothing there. And that is just what the vodka drinkers \u2013 the acknowledged target audience for this whisky \u2013 will appreciate most.<\/p>\n

The product is called White Owl whisky \u2013 WOW for short, inevitably \u2013 and it\u2019s going to be hitting the market as a Canadian whisky alternative to deluxe vodkas like Grey Goose (I\u2019m sure any similarity in the name is a complete coincidence), coming in at around $40, or so I am told.<\/p>\n

Whisky lovers will find it puzzling \u2013 it\u2019s so completely un-whisky-like \u2013 but its purpose is to muscle into the cocktail scene, a rye disguised as a white spirit. Hell why not, say I.<\/p>\n

And just to show what they are capable of in a more orthodox format, Highwood Distillers have also released a deliciously sharp, smooth rye whisky called Century reserve 21-year-old Rye Whisky through Vintages. I don\u2019t have to tell you that most Canadian \u201crye\u201d isn\u2019t rye whisky at all but a blend of many grains. This one is something to savour or, if you\u2019re feeling really flush or else completely at the end of your rope, to use in a Manhattan. Either way, yummy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone loves anomalous spirits \u2013 by which I mean, of course, that I do. In a couple of weeks a new Canadian whisky is being released in Ontario unlike any Canadian whisky hitherto seen. It\u2019s a blended 10-year-old based on a wheat-and-rye distillation mash and it is as clear and colourless as vodka. According to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[98,1,100],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2106,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions\/2106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}