Crown Royal Deluxe
26th October 2015
Time for another Tweet Tasting, through Steve Rush (@thewhiskywire), this time for Crown Royal Canadian Whisky (@CrownRoyal), #CrownRoyal, this is a brand new whisky for me, and I have never tried any Canadian whisky before.
So what can we tell you about Crown Royal Whisky? Crown Royal is a blended Canadian whisky owned by Diageo, which purchased it when the Seagram portfolio was dissolved in 2000. It is the top-selling Canadian whisky in the United States.
The rest of the information here comes from Crown Royal themselves.
CROWN ROYAL® Blended Canadian Whisky was first created as a gift for the King and Queen of England to celebrate their visit to Canada in 1939 – a delight truly fit for royalty. To this day, every drop of Crown Royal blended whisky is crafted to meet the same uncompromising standards, making it, to many discerning palates, the very best whisky of all whisky brands
It’s impossible to describe any CROWN ROYAL® Blended Canadian Whisky without calling out its unmistakable smoothness. Every drop is crafted from resilient natural ingredients that were born to weather the challenging Canadian conditions where negative 30 degree temperatures are the norm. These hearty ingredients are carefully combined with the distinctively smooth water, which is naturally filtered through the limestone beneath Lake Winnipeg.
Fifty of the finest whiskies are meticulously blended to create the signature smoothness of Crown Royal. At the heart of this exceptional blend is our unique CROWN ROYAL® Hand Selected Barrel Canadian Whisky. Distilled to this day in the Coffey Still (named after the man who invented it, Aeneas Coffey), it’s the only known still of its kind in North America. This Coffey Rye whisky brings the signature creaminess to the Crown Royal Deluxe blend.
The temperature swings in Gimli have a profound impact on the smoothness of Crown Royal—and the character of the residents who passionately produce it. The maturing barrels experience extreme temperature swings, causing the wood to expand and contract with the changes in temperature, which slowly adds to the developing character.
On tasting tonight is the Crown Royal Delux Blend 40% ABV
Crown Royal Deluxe
This a blend of fifty whiskies, with coffey rye whisky included. You can order this from Master of Malt (@MasterofMalt) at the great value of £26.20
Kirsty’s Notes
Nose:
Honeyed sweetness, with green apples, fresh kiwi and fried banana. Rich butterscotch sauce with vanilla ice cream and as it opens in the glass there are some deeper fruits with blackcurrants, figs, and plump raisins, with dark chocolate sauce before an uplifting dash of lime brings an effervescent note.
There’s a spicy depth to this, with cracked peppercorns, ginger root and fennel all adding heat and extra layers on the nose, there is still the vanilla sweetness. Marzipan was suggested, but for me it was all about sugared pecans, and fresh pineapple with mint. Worther’s Originals (a hard caramel/butterscotch sweet), with apples, pears and mascarpone. The nose is very changeable, it leaves you guessing, however the sweetness is always there.
It’s like being at a sweet shop sometimes with milky bars and fruit salad sweets, with the shell of galaxy minstrel.
I love the changing fruits, our journey takes us from orchards to tropics via a sweetshop. There are some spicy notes, with heat from cracked peppercorn, cloves and cinnamon before the rich, woody notes from the oak comes through.
Palate:
Not as sweet as the nose suggested, in fact it’s almost bitter with a tannic woody kick, with the cracked peppercorns, cloves and liquorice from the nose with green, damp, slightly mossy undertones. It doesn’t take long for the sweetness to reappear with lashings of vanilla cream and toffee apples. Hot pancake batter, and a traditional banana split.
There is some ripe mango with plenty of nutmeg and school custard over tinned peaches. There is a rather peculiar vanilla cream over roasted fennel note, which isn’t unpleasant, just very different, before oak spices, cloves, pepper & tobacco leaves appear which makes this rich and earthy, before this becomes too dry or too rich homemade butterscotch sauce is back to reclaim the sweeter side of life.
Finish:
The spice really comes into its own, the cinnamon arrives and the cloves and cracked peppercorns are still there. It’s full of rich oak, pecan nuttiness and vanilla creaminess with dries to a light buttered popcorn note.
Overall thoughts
As I mentioned, this is my first Canadian whisky but it won’t my last. I thought that this would be one dimensional, but this is actually quite complex with spice and sweetness toing and froing. Personally I would like to see the ABV a bit higher, I think that would really lift this dram a long way. Its price point makes this a fantastic bang for buck dram and one that I would happily have in the house and revisit, it’s made me keen to try more Canadian whisky. All round worth a try, and if you can forget it’s 40% ABV and just sit back and enjoy it, then I think it’s a whisky which could be many things to many people.
WhiskyCorner.co.uk 