I have been writing this blog for years now. Starting as something good to come out of a breakup it is still running as I approach getting married. When, after all these years, someone send me an email asking to send me a sample I still get a surprise. A lot of the time I just assume they are mistaken, did they confuse me with someone else? Someone who can write and spell perhaps?

Given that then I owe Macaloney’s an apology for accepting these 2 packs of mini’s and not opening them until now. Months have past and I have haven’t had the energy to kick start the blog and get writing. So apologies again and on with the show.

The Distillery

Macaloney Island distillery opened in 2016 in Vancouver island by the Scottish born Dr Graeme Macaloney along with the technical support of Dr Jim Swan and ex Diageo distiller Mike Nicolson. Graeme incidentally went to the same university as me but where I chose Computer Science he went to learn all about fermentation. Let me tell you one’s and zero’s is absolutely super exciting but perhaps not in the same league as brewing and fermenting.

With that solid background and heritage the distillery ethos is definitely rooted in looking to the Scotch industry and applying the techniques, equipment and marketing to their operation in Canada. This obviously attracts attention but really if you think about and read some of the recent Japanese articles on this site you will see copying and applying existing practices oversees is something almost traditional after over 100 years of it.

The distillery sits alongside a beer brewery and visitor centre producing both peated and unpeated whisky where the peated malted barley is even peated on-site. Although there was a visit to Islay first to see how on-site maltings works there.

With the Canadian government’s attitude to alcohol and taxation to have a young business trying really hard to make an authentic and premium spirit for the local and export market has to be something of a major challenge and headache. I really hope though that given Canadian drinkers get such a small subset of the whiskies produced available to them that having a enthusiastic producer in the country with such a broad range of bottles and styles available will be a welcome addition to their shelves.

The Whisky

The labels on the bottles all include a lot of detail. It is clear there has been care taken to recognise the need more transparency on whisky labels so we get the casks used, declarations on natural colour, non-chill filtered and an ABV of 46%.

For this release the menu of casks used was a familiar mix to the newer challenger distilleries (bourbon, oloroso, red wine and PX). Across the 10 samples I have there is a good amount of mixing things up between those main notes so we can also add experimentation to the list of pluses here.

Being an import in the UK this isn’t going to be an easy bottle to find but at the moment Master of Malt have this bottle on for 76 pounds.

Tasting Notes

Colour – Irn-Bru

Nose – immediately syrupy sweet, caramel and mint leaves

Palate – chocolate sauce and a boozy berry compote

Finish – starts peppered but ends on icing sugar on fresh doughnuts

Final Thoughts

So the first in what is going to become Canada Monday’s here was off to a good start. It’s clear there is passion and a focus on quality. Some people open a distillery for cynical reasons and others because the business of producing their own range of whiskies is the ultimate goal. Macaloney falls into the later not the former