WINNIPEG– Manitoba’s Crown Royal has been named the best whiskey in Canada at the Canadian Whiskey Awards.
The head judge says Noble Collection Winter Wheat won by a landslide.
Crown Royal also won best blended whiskey and sippin’ whiskey of the year.
All of it is made at the distillery of the year on 360 acres on the shores of Lake Winnipeg just north of Gimli.
The Gimli, Manitoba Whiskey Factory
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 reigning monarch King George VI, and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, visited Canada in 1939. Crown Royal was introduced that year by Samuel Bronfman, president of Seagram, as a tribute to the royal visit. It was available only in Canada until 1964.
Today, Crown Royal is produced solely at the Crown Royal distillery at Gimli, on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It was also produced in Waterloo, Ontario, until the plant there closed in 1992. Daily production of Crown Royal uses 10,000 bushels of grain and requires 750,000 imperial gallons (3,400,000 L; 900,000 US gal) of water. The whisky produced at the Manitoba distillery is stored in two million barrels, located in 46 warehouses over 5 acres (2 ha) of land. The whisky is then blended and bottled in Amherstburg, Ontario.
