Crown Royal Barley Edition

After a slow start, the Crown Royal Noble Collection has had one of the best and most interesting string of releases in Canadian whisky - probably the most impressive since early Forty Creek - and I might dare to wager that the last few years have been even better. It took a while for the series to get going - cornerstone blend was an ok riff off classic Crown Royal blending, and the wine barrel release was a very impressive blend - but the previous 4 releases have been absolute apex predators and are among my favourite Canadian whiskies ever - the 13 year old blender's mash, the 16 year old rye, the winter wheat, and now this - a 100% barley whisky.

Sadly, this is the last of the series. Crown Royal has assured me that they will continue to release limited editions, but not in a series - however, they referenced their 29 year old as an example so it would appear they are leaning towards the expensive, smoother types that are less accessible and less interesting than the noble collection (that said, the 29 year old was no slouch). It is honestly very sad to see this go - after the demise of Forty Creek's annual release and the Wiser's releases (not sure? try the lot 40 port finish....). This was one of the last remaining bright lights from the big producers.

I found this whisky in New York state and vermont but it is available elsewhere in the states. As far as Crown Royal has told me, they don't plan to release in Canada.

Enough "in the old days"...

From my sources at Crown Royal, this whisky is a mixture of two separate distillation runs, at least 5 years old with a batch that was in the 7 year range too. Whisky is 100% barley with no other additions - 85% unmalted and 15% malted. It was a single distillation on a column still. You don't see whisky like this released often. They had me at "unmalted barley".

One might be tempted to think this is like an irish whisky with the mixture of unmalted and malted barley - but it is nothing like one. The nose is big, and very crown royal flavouring-whisky type. Big oak, dried apricot, intense and grassy spices, banana cream pie, fennel, white pepper, rose, icing sugar, tangy hibiscus, ferrero rocher, those round white coconut candies (raffaello), apple juice, white grape - and these are notes from just the first 20 seconds of nosing. It's an assault of scents from a south asian spice bazaar, but yet with confectionary and fruit notes. It's all in balance. Oh, there is one more thing - BARLEY. and lots of it. That bright, slightly earthy grain that the Scots and others do such a good job with.

The taste is rich, spicy, woody, and balanced nicely with dried fruit. Barley throughout. Terrific movement. It has the rich dried fruit and spice seen in many crown royals, and it starts sharply there before slowing down through some woody spice and fresh grain before drifting into light earth, clove, apple, and wood tannin. The finish is bright with fruit - fresh apple and banana (an odd combo I know, but it works) with oak, spice, sauteed apples, cream pies of various sorts, fresh grain notes, and a fermentation-type complexity as you see in some of the great examples of British bitters.

I could continue to wax poetic. The barley here is big - but it's nuanced, buffeted, and stretched in a way I've never seen before in my (humbly) fairly extensive whisky exploration. What is more - much like winter wheat - it's a whisky that continues to beg another sip and is incredibly easy to drink.

I thought about giving this a 93, but I bumped it to 94 - just because of what it does with barley. The grain isn't lost, but it's different than any other barley whisky I've had AND is stunning, so I couldn't resist. A 94 score means it's in my 97th percentile, e.g., I consider it better than 97% of the whiskies I've tasted to date.

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