{"id":725,"date":"2015-08-10T11:25:30","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T15:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/?p=725"},"modified":"2016-07-19T10:26:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-19T14:26:35","slug":"alberta-premium-dark-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/2015\/08\/10\/alberta-premium-dark-horse\/","title":{"rendered":"Alberta Premium Dark Horse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alberta Premium Dark Horse is a very distinctive offering in the Canadian landscape.<\/p>\n

Known for their expertise in producing 100% rye whiskies, Alberta Distillers has produced an unusual beast with their Dark Horse (also known as Alberta Rye Dark Batch in the US, due to copyright issues with the dark horse name).<\/p>\n

Alberta Distillers has been up-front about what is in here. Most of the bottle (~90%) is a mix of two types of Canadian rye whisky: High ABV rye aged for 12 years in used barrels, and low ABV pot still rye aged for 6 years in new barrels. Rounding out all that rye whisky is ~8% of US-made bourbon (believed to be Old Grand-Dad – we’ll get back to this in a moment). But the really distinctive element is ~0.5-1% sherry added directly to the mix. The final whisky is then aged in heavily-charred American oak barrels, bottled at 45% ABV, and sold at a very competitive price.<\/p>\n

While the addition of actual sherry into the mix may seem like a cheat to single malt fans, it is the net effect of traditional aging of whiskies in ex-sherry casks. I’ve seen estimates online that 500L first-fill casks can contain up to 7L of the previous product (stored in the wood staves). Over time, this migrates and mixes with the new make product, producing a distinctive end result (i.e., a sherry bomb whisky). Rather than aging Dark Horse in (expensive) first-fill sherry barrels, they went right to the horse’s mouth (sorry!) and simply added in an equivalent amount of actual sherry before aging in traditional barrels. This makes Dark Horse a sherry-bomb version of a Canadian rye whisky.<\/p>\n

But what about the main elements of the mix, specifically that corn whisky?\u00a0Note that despite the “rye whisky” moniker, most Canadian whisky is actually a blend of a relatively small amount of low-proof rye “flavouring” whisky added to high-proof grain whisky. Sometimes that includes Canadian-made corn whisky in the mix.<\/p>\n

While this composition may seem odd, it makes perfect sense once you know about the 9.09% rule. A long time ago, it was decided that you could add 1\/10 volume of non-Canadian whisky to a Canadian whisky and still allow it to be sold as such. Legend has it that this was to allow Canadian whisky to be sold in the US under generous tax break exemptions given to US products. Basically, Canadian distillers would import cheap US-made Bourbon, add it to Canadian whisky (up to 9.09% final volume, which is an additional 1\/10) and then sell the concomitant blend back in the US as “Canadian whisky” and reap a tax break.<\/p>\n

Here in Canada, there was no need to actually use US bourbon. Apparently, distillers just kept the original Canadian formulations intact for the products intended for domestic consumption. This was possible since the US versions were adjusted to match the standard Canadian flavour profile. But this practice seems to only have been applied to value blends destined for mixing – premium products are a different story.\u00a0 While it was initially reported that Dark Horse would be using Canadian corn whisky (done bourbon-style), this was quickly corrected by Beam-Suntory, who were open about the use of US bourbon from the beginning.\u00a0 At some point, they also confirmed that it was Old Grand-Dad bourbon specifically (although I can’t find an official published source for that).<\/p>\n

FYI, there’s a good public article about the 9.09% rule \u2013 as it applies to the US-release of this whisky \u2013 by Davin de Kergommeaux on Whisky Advocate.<\/a><\/p>\n

Personally, I find the Dark Horse to be an exceptionally good value in the Canadian whisky landscape. The Meta-Critic database seems a bit mixed on this one though, giving it an 8.67 \u00b1 0.36 on 11 reviews. While that is above average for a Canadian whisky, it is still toward the mid-range of scores in this category. But you can’t beat the price – along with CC 100% Rye<\/a>, this is a quality product masquerading at an entry-level budget price. It is different though, so I would recommend it to fans of Canadian rye who are looking to expand into new flavour profiles.<\/p>\n

Probably the most positive review I’ve seen of the Alberta Premium Dark Horse is by Davin de Kergommeaux<\/a>. Jason Hambrey gives a more typical rating on his Whisky Won <\/a>site.\"Albera<\/a><\/p>\n

Something else that stirs up mixed feelings about this whisky \u2013 its suitability for mixed drinks (sorry for the pun). \ud83d\ude09 Because of the strong sherry influence, I would have thought that this whisky is best served as a gentle sipper (preferably neat). Dave Broom seems to agree \u2013 in his mixed-drink book The Whisky Manual<\/a>, he gave this whisky relatively low scores when mixed with five classic mixes (i.e., Soda, cola, ginger ale, coconut water and green tee). But he does point out that it could work well in a sazerac style cocktail. According to David de Kergommeaux in the earlier link above, Dark Horse has apparently become a popular mixing rye in bars, as well as a bartender’s favourite for their own concoctions. Hopefully you will enjoy experimenting with this versatile and distinctive Canadian whisky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alberta Premium Dark Horse is a very distinctive offering in the Canadian landscape. Known for their expertise in producing 100% rye whiskies, Alberta Distillers has produced an unusual beast with their Dark Horse (also known as Alberta Rye Dark Batch in the US, due to copyright issues with the dark horse name). Alberta Distillers has been up-front about what is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[37,19,21,18,25,29],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-whiskies","tag-alberta","tag-budget","tag-canadian","tag-nas","tag-rye","tag-sherry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2229,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions\/2229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}