Forty Creek Confederation Oak Reserve

By the way, if you want a ride, try taproom – a sour beer finished whisky that is currently 25% off on Forty Creek’s own website.

A scathing assessment of a once proud and innovative distillery.

The days of good confederation oak and special releases have been replaced with mediocrity.

It has been years since I sought out a special release. I probably stopped a couple of years too late.

Luckily I still have some of the original batch, as well as some Heart of Gold, one of my favourite releases.

I fear that Hiram Walker is going that way too. The early Norther Border collection releases, especially the Lot 40 CS of 2017 and 2018 were fantastic, but none of the high proof rye since then has come close. And we wait and wait for something as fantastic as the Wiser’s 23.

Other distilleries are picking up the slack, like Alberta Premium. But how long before they too forget what they came to do?

Corby seems to be in an identity crisis. And i’m not sure they ever really understood what they needed to do to maintain the connoisseur audience.

I’m glad Alberta Premium is releasing their cask strength, and i reqlly like their new Reifel Rye (more than AP CS) but it’s still disappointing that they don’t do more. If they opened the floodgates, it’d be awesome. But instead, they sell their best (and most) whisky to jim beam and others to bottle.

Oddly enough, crown is currently my favourite Canadian whisky brand. None of the noble collection releases have been bad, and the last few have been absolutely awesome. But even they leave much to be desired, given wha they have sitting around at their distillery.

@JasonHambrey thank you, friend!

As for the quality of Forty Creek whiskies, 'Sic transit gloria mundi'.

"PAST RESULTS DO NOT GUARANTEE FUTURE PERFORMANCE."

Human beings like things easy, like to assume that if you put the same label on two different bottles of juice that they will taste the same. They do not. They never have. Each batch, each bottle of whisky is unique. Human beings don't like to accept that very basic truth about whisky. It just seems like too much work for them, like life becomes too out of control if they cannot mentally control what their future sensory experiences will be by categorizing them via easy assumptions based upon identical bottle names and labels.

I am very much looking forward to the day when I eventually open my bottle of Forty Creek John's Private Cask # 1.

@Victor I agree that each batch will be different, but that does not mean that the quality has to deteriorate. Look at examples of distilleries that continue to put out good expressions, even if there is batch variation. Aberlour, Amrut, Springbank. If the will is there, if you put in the work, the results should usually be good.

If you get complacent, like 40 Creek, and perhaps now, Corby, things go from worse to worst.

Many of my friends who are more casual whisky drinkers than the fine folks here looked at me like I was nuts when I said that FC Copper Pot was suffering a sharp decline in quality a few years ago. My wife's cousin said "Look at the label. It still says Forty Creek Copper Pot. They have a winning recipe and it's not like they're changing it." Oh Mikey, Mikey, Mikey. Yes, yes they did change it and anyone who was paying attention noticed. Many on this very site feared and predicted this very thing: big conglomerate buys distillery and quality drops off big time because of increased pressure to "optimize" this and "maximize" that. It's a sad state of affairs.

@OdysseusUnbound it goes a lot further than changing the recipe.

@Nock and I have tasted side by side from his bottle of Aberlour A'bunadh Batch # 45 and my bottle of Aberlour A'bunadh Batch # 45. They were VERY different. One a 92 point whisky, the other an 82 point whisky. The differences can result from matters as simple as at what point during the bottling run was the bottle in question bottled...the beginning, the middle, or the end. Sazerac 18 Rye was bottled for multiple years from the same huge batch stored in a stainless steel tank, so that it would not change. Every year the bottlings were different. Not just the same recipe. Not just the same distillate. The same aged whiskey...did not taste the same.

@Nozinan when you discuss the subject of quality and of "deteriouration" those are completely individual judgments. What I am expressing is that no two bottles of whiski are the same no matter what anyone's assessments are relative to their quality.

I have yet to try (or even find a bottle of) Forty Creek. Sounds like I might not want to bother looking at this point. Very sad.

My last special release FC purhase was Evolution, found a couple on clearance back in the day.

I have been ranting over the years that the best Canadian Whisky is bottled in the US and it has gotten even worse with NDP brands like Found North, Cats Eye, Storytime and Barrell Spirits buying, blending and bottling hyper aged Canadian barrels of distillate at cask strength that were rotting away at the Palliser/Black Velvet warehouses and Valleyfield in Quebec. Meanwhile we get Black Velvet drech and Schenley OFC. I have tried several Found North batches and the Storytime Old Dragon Bones 15 year Hazmat Valleyfield Rye, there is not much that can touch these that are bottled in Canada. I salute Great Plains and Paradigm for putting out some limited bottles of high proof sourced Canadian Corn with a pinch of young Rye in the Great Plains to salvage the age statement.

John Hall was a GREAT whiski salesman ("meritage" LOL). He did a great job PROMOTING the brand. When he was banging the drum for Forty Creek, the Canadian whiski scene was barren: nothing but 40% bottom shelf shyte. So, slight improvements - courtesy of 40 Creek - were seen as revelations, though eons behind Scotch ... and even Bourbon. Since John Hall (and partmers) sold the company, things were bound to go back to "normal" - bottom shelf shyte, without the personal promotion from the founder. Releases during JH's time weren't as good as the hype ... but it's all whiski geeks had in CDN whisky (other than the OVERPRICED American repackaging of Alberta Distillers whisky). Therefore, it's no surprise few people care about 40 Creek ... now that all the salesmanship from the founder is nowhere to be seen!

@JasonHambrey, I believe a jinx would have been a one-off occurrence. What has happened at Forty Creek is more of a curse. When we attended Whisky Weekend in 2015 the distillery was already marked, Camapari "intelligence" was present throughout the distillery. Bottom shelf carries the bottom line. Forty Creek had already begun their plunge to the b-o-t-t-o-m.

Very passionate review. I feel this is the unfortunate direction of many brands these days.