Honouring Alexander Keith
Glenora Distillery producing whisky distilled from Keith’s India Pale Ale
GLENVILLE — Eighteen years ago, two tanker loads of Alexander Keith's product vanished somewhere in the hills of western Cape Breton Island.
Now, almost two decades later, the fate of that ale has been revealed.
It turns out, the vanished liquid has been sitting in bourbon oak barrels in a dark corner of a warehouse at the Glenora Distillery located in a scenic valley on Highway 19, about halfway between Mabou and Inverness.
And the ale is no longer ale. After being distilled in the early-2000s, it is now called Glen Breton Alexander Keith's Single Malt Whisky and it's for sale.
Glenora president Lauchie MacLean said it all started with a quirky idea of somehow connecting the product of a 200-year-old Nova Scotia brewery with the worldrenowned Cape Breton distillery.
“There was a thought that since their great beer is made from barley and yeast and our fabulous product is also made from barley and yeast, then why couldn't we distill it,” recalled MacLean.
“We came to the realization that was no reason why we couldn't so that led to discussions with Keith's. It's all about quality. Keith's has always been a quality beer and when Glenora first launched our product we hoped that everybody would believe, as we did, that our product was quality also.”
So, Glenora took receipt of a couple of tanker trucks full of Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale (IPA). The product was unloaded into some of the distillery's washbacks (large vats where yeast is
added) and the distillation process began.
MacLean admits he and his team had no clue as to how the new 18-year-old single malt whiskey would turn out.
“We had no idea what it would taste like, so we did a fairly large test over a period of days and weeks and at that time we didn't know if it was going to palatable, drinkable or otherwise or used as hand sanitizer,” said the Halifaxbased MacLean, whose family settled in the Washabuck area of Cape Breton after leaving Scotland in the early-1800s.
“After the first couple of years of aging in barrels we thought it was a bit malty and we didn't know if it would be a product that was going to be universally accepted or not.”
So the whisky was left to age. Fast forward to two years ago when MacLean decided it was time to once again give it a taste test.
“We took some samples and I said ‘wow', all of sudden this product jumped off my palate and I said ‘this is a winner,'” he said.
“When you take a 10-outof-10 product like Alexander
Keith's and a 10-out-of-10 product like Glen Breton Rare it would usually add up to 20, but this time it made 100 – it made an exponentially incredible product. We think the product is phenomenal.”
The distillery then packaged some of the single malt and got in touch with Alexander Keith's. The response was positive.
And, in a written release, Alexander Keith's Brewery general manager Matt Miles, gave the new product his
company's endorsement.
“After all these years, it's amazing to see this collaboration between these two Nova Scotia institutions come to fruition,” he stated.
“To have such a wellcrafted whisky from Glenora bear Mr. Keith's name is something we think our founder, especially given his Scottish heritage, would be proud of.”
For his part, Lauchie MacLean believes his own forefathers would also approve of the new malt whisky.
“I reckon Alexander Keith is smiling about this from above and I also think that my great-great-great-great grandfather, Lachlan MacLean who came here from Scotland at the age of 87 with his entire family, would also be smiling about this.”
For those wishing to sample the distillery's latest product, a 700-ml offering of the whisky, which has a 43 per cent alcohol volume, is available at an online price of $200 per boxed bottle.
According to MacLean, quantities are limited.
“We have less than a couple of dozen barrels, so we're talking thousands of bottles and not tens of thousands of bottles,” he acknowledged.
The Glenora Distillery was founded in 1989 by the late Bruce Jardine, who realized his vision of building a single malt whisky distillery in a very Scottish part of Cape Breton. The company, which also operates an onsite inn, restaurant, pub and shop, along with distillery tours and tasting, has been under its present ownership since 1994.
Alexander Keith's Brewery was founded in 1820, sold to Oland Brewery in 1928 and later purchased by the Labatt Brewing Company. It is now part of Anheuser-Busch InBev, a Belgium-based holding company.