The 'premium' booze that upset some Canadian whisky-makers in 1985
Lower-priced liquor product could blemish reputation of true whisky products, other distillers said
Why wait?
That seemed to be the strategic consideration when a distiller started selling a rye whisky-esque drink that wasn't quite a rye whisky.
It was called John Palliser Premium Canadian Liquor and in 1985, it was being tested out in Saskatchewan — a province where rye whiskies accounted for the majority of spirit sales.
The Palliser-branded product, however, wasn't a rye whisky — though it tasted similar and could be manufactured a lot more quickly.
"Almost all rye whisky in Canada is made mostly with corn and aged in wooden barrels for at least three years," the CBC's Irene Bakaric told Midday viewers in a report that aired in late January of 1985.
"John Palliser is also made with corn — but it's not aged."
Cheaper than true whiskies
Bakaric said the distiller had "come up with a process" that produced a similar-tasting drink that did not require aging.
"Because it's faster to make, it's cheaper than the Canadian whiskies in the liquor store," said Bakaric.
And while some consumers might have welcomed a cheaper option at the liquor store, it was not a product that competing distillers approved of.
"They say an imitation blemishes the reputation of Canadian whisky and they don't want it on the rye shelf," said Bakaric.
'Pseudo whisky' makes inroads
Those competing distillers continued to make a similar argument in the months ahead.
"It upsets me to see this pseudo-whisky on the shelf beside other, real, Canadian whiskies," Jean-Pierre Fortier of Schenley Canada Inc., told the Globe and Mail's Report on Business Magazine, a few months later.
By October of that year, the Globe and Mail reported Gilbey Canada Inc. had plans to market that same liquor to "budget-minded whisky drinkers" across the country by Christmas.
