Unity: Forty Creek Annual Release for 2018

Forty Creek blender, Bill Ashburn has been part of the Forty Creek story longer than anyone else. He was with Rieder distillery when John K. Hall bought it and converted it to Forty Creek. So, you can be sure Bill knows how to find all the best barrels.

Since Hall sold the distillery to Campari, it has become Bill’s job to carry on Hall’s tradition of annual special releases. These are revealed each September at a celebratory Whisky Weekend held at the distillery in Grimsby.

This year the team decided to bring in five Forty Creek fans from across Canada to help in designing the new whisky. Back in March, Bill created three variations on a blend for them to sample, intending that they vote for their favourite.

However, things don’t always go according to plan and the group couldn’t come to consensus. So, Bill went back to the lab and created a fourth blend. This time everyone loved it, so Forty Creek is bottling it as their 2018 limited release.

Called, “Unity,” the special release for 2018 includes a sub-blend of 4-year-old Forty Creek whiskies.This sub-blend was further aged using high mocha wood staves. Then Bill added 10-year-old corn whisky and a smidgen of 15-year-old Portuguese-style Starboard wine aged in used Forty Creek barrels.

Remember Forty Creek Port Wood Reserve from way back when? This is the wine that was in those original barrels that Bill and John used to finish that whisky. To free the barrels up so they could finish Port Wood Reserve, they had to find a place for the wine.

With no room in any of the tanks at the distillery, they had decided to keep it in used Forty Creek whisky barrels. All these years later as part of the Unity blend it provides a certain symmetry and should bring a really interesting layer to the final whisky. But we’ll have to wait until September to find out.

Reservations for numbered bottles are open now, and close on May 25 at 5 pm Eastern Time. Just follow the link below.

https://www.fortycreekwhisky.com/WhiskyWeekend/2018/BottleReservations/