Alberta Premium Is Finally Available in the US & Why It Matters

Bottle and glass photo courtesy of Alberta Premium

When it comes to rye whisky there are several styles that have survived or are making a comeback. Most people have had the 95% rye, 5% malted barley made by Midwest Grain Products bottled as various brands. Kentucky-style ryes like Wild Turkey, Jim Beam Rye, and Heaven Hill’s Pikesville and Rittenhouse boast considerable corn contents and are often referred to as “accountant’s rye,” made that way because of the cost of the rye grain itself and the prevalence of corn in Kentucky. Pennsylvania Rye tends to be made with just rye and malted barley, as does Monongahela rye. 

But many Canadian whisky brands are known for producing component whiskies, that is whisky made entirely from one grain, aged in separate barrels, that are only combined during the blending process pre-bottling. At Alberta Distillers, 100% rye whisky is bottled as Alberta Premium, the number one selling 100% rye whisky in the world, according to General Manager George Teichroeb, and it’s finally being released in the United States.

General Manager George Teichroeb photo courtesy of Alberta Premium

“Aside from us being able to call it the number one selling 100% rye whisky in the world, we love that, I'm sure the US market is going to be very kind to it,” says Teichroeb. “I had the good fortune of calling Louisville home for almost eight years. After getting a sense of what people want in the heart of bourbon country, I think it's going to be fantastic. Everybody that I've shared it with so far really appreciates it. I'd really like us to see that do well in that market, and being a 75-year-old company, being able to enter the US market at this stage, I'm really looking forward to this.”

History of Alberta Distillers

Alberta Distillers has been around more than six decades, but its location signaled a shift for Canadian whisky producers.

“Alberta Distillers started in 1946,” Teichroeb says. “We're in the foothills of the mountains, and at that time, most of the distilleries were out east in Ontario, so it’s a very different climate, very humid. But in Alberta, Frank McMahon was looking for an elevation change. We're over 3000 feet above sea level, and it's a dry air. For maturation is going to have an entirely different impact on our whiskies as opposed to whisky out East. In 1946, McMahon saw this 42 acres that we sit on today, it was just on the outskirts at that time of Calgary, right in the heartland of rye grain country. and we have a major malting facility less than a mile away, and we're also surrounded by ranches and farmers and feed lots. It was the ideal spot, and the abundance of natural resources including being one of the first, I believe the first, distilleries in Canada to run on natural gas, and then also the abundance of glacier-fed water that we have here made it the perfect spot.”

Harvesting photo courtesy of Alberta Premium

Single Grain Whisky

But making whisky out of a single grain can be tricky. Different grains have different enzymatic potentials, which is why American whisky makers often combine them. Corn has very poor enzymatic potential, which means it lacks enough enzymes to break the starches down into sugars so the yeast can convert it into ethanol. That’s why Bourbon and other whiskies with lots of corn need at least 10% malted barley in the mash — to reach the full sugar conversion. Rye grain and wheat grain contain moderate enzymatic potentials but generally would need to be malted in order to unlock it. And in fact, many distilleries are starting to make malted rye whiskies, which contain high amounts of malted rye grains, sometimes as much as 100%.

But Alberta Distillers unlocked a different method decades ago through the manufacturing of enzymes that can be added to the rye grain mash to gain a fuller conversion to ethanol.

Using Rye in Whiskey

“Rye grain is a very resilient grain, and in Canada has to be able to stand up some very harsh climate, so the rye grain itself has already established itself as a very resilient grain in the conditions that it has to endure here in Alberta,” says Teichroeb. “But to tame that in the fermentation process, we have our own enzyme plant on site, and that really provides us the ability to, as we say, it tames the rye. Any time that somebody wants to use rye, they find it bubbles over, they get foaming, they get all of these different problems with it. But when you create your own enzyme, we are creating that cocktail mix for it to work in the mashing and then finish working in the fermentation stage. You can tailor it to be unique for the grain type, so that's one of the main reasons we've been so successful in producing 100% rye whisky, is we have three gluc reactors, as well as our microbiologists who handle just enzymes. For us, it has worked, and we get a lot of distillers coming through here and wanting to replicate that, but it's you can't do it with commercial enzymes. Having our own enzyme plant on site is a great advantage for running 100% rye. We believe we were the first distillery built to run on 100% rye grain, although legally, I guess, are some of our folks will challenge me, can you prove it? I can't prove it, but it's not something that would have been done back in the 1940s when a lot everybody was using malted grains. That's another advantage of having an enzyme plant, is all of our grains are un-malted. That's not to say that we haven't done that for some customers where we have run malted grain, but for our products, it's all unmalted grain and Alberta Premium was one of our first, 1958 is when the first release came out, and we haven't changed very much since then.”

There are several differences when it comes to the climate in Alberta, and Teichroeb feels fortunate to have been able to spend eight years working and living in Kentucky, working alongside Fred Noe at sister plant Jim Beam, which has given him a broad knowledge base about the differences in the various processes.

“I had good fortune of working with Fred in Louisville for many years and also out East in some of the operations that we used to own there as well,” he recalls. “Getting the liquid, Alberta Premium, for example, we use two distillate types, from a continuous column still, and then we use also pot still product. So when we go through that sequencing after maturation, but as we're getting ready to put it into a bottle, we use those two distillation types, and then three different types of barrels that we use to age our product here. First, I'd say rack warehouse aging, we find that it's slightly different than you're going to get from a pallet style warehouse. We have pallet-style warehouses as well. During maturation, being 3200 feet above sea level, the pressure and the dry air, that maturation as the barrel starts going through a filtration process and it expands and contracts, it's moving liquid in and out of the staves, and we actually see that the liquid penetrates deeper in the staves with the pressure we have here than you would get in a different type of climate. Some folks are saying you actually get a faster acceleration on the age profile, but I'm not sure. We see some evidence of that, but I don't know that you could distinctly determine that when you age something five years and it's going through multiple seasons and not all your seasons are very consistent. Also related to the pressure, we see evaporation happening a little bit more in that first year. We like to think that we're very consistent about barrel quality and its that atmospheric pressure that's creating some of that. If we had to have a struggle, it might be that you probably lose maybe a little bit more than you would in a more humid climates, but the trade-off. What you get from that maturation process is that deeper oaky aroma after you mature it. I would say that's probably the most distinctive difference.”

Same As Ever

He goes on to explain that Alberta Premium was first released in 1958, and aside from an early change to the package and some market-driven supplier changes for raw materials, it has remained consistent throughout its time on the market for more than six decades. It’s not an age-stated product, but rather is blended for consistency. And while there have been some brief trials in markets other than Canada, Alberta Premium has largely only been available in Canada until now.

“We've always held ourselves to the Canadian market, and honestly, as we're changing and trying to grow the brand with the business model we've always had here, it has been a struggle,” Teichroeb says. “But now we find ourselves now in a great spot where we can expand a little with it and make sure that we have enough to support it going forward. Our first big expansion is into the US this year.”

Bottle and cocktail photo courtesy of Alberta Premium

How to Enjoy Alberta Premium

So how does Teichroeb like to drink his whisky?

“If I'm having cask strength and it's sitting outside on the deck in a nice evening, just on ice. But I'll admit, if I go out, I like to see the different ways that Old Fashioneds can be made. I honestly didn't know how many different ways bartenders could make Old Fashioneds, and I love it. One of our local bartenders makes one with two shots of Alberta Premium, he'd make a really strong Old Fashioned and it was amazing. So an Old Fashioned if I go out.”

Alberta Distillers has supplied many noteworthy brands over the years, including Whistle Pig, so the flavor may not be as unfamiliar as you’d expect. Alberta Premium is available now in limited supply across the U.S. with an MSRP of $24.99 at 40% ABV.