Water & Climate

The Bow River flows right through Calgary, fed by glaciers and snowfields from the Rocky Mountains. It's from these very mountains that Alberta Distillers draws its water. It's cool and low in minerals, long before it even reaches the city.

The distillery itself sits at an altitude of roughly 975 meters, considerably higher than most whisky regions in the world. At this elevation, the air is drier and thinner, which already makes a difference during mashing and fermentation, not to mention the long years spent afterward in the barrel.

What Alberta is particularly notorious for is the Chinook, a warm, dry downslope wind that sweeps down over the Rocky Mountains in winter. It can turn bitter frost into a thaw within just a few hours. Days later, it vanishes just as quickly. No other Canadian whisky region experiences such dramatic temperature swings.

Add to that a climate that's already extreme to begin with: cold, dry winters, warm, mostly cloudless summers, and humidity levels throughout the year that sit well below those of damp Scotland or salty Campbeltown. The prairie barely knows fog, but plenty of sun and wind. You feel it all year round.

What this means for a barrel of whisky only reveals itself over years. Dry air draws mostly water out of the wood, hardly any alcohol. This is precisely what flips a rule that holds almost everywhere else, right here in Calgary. A later stop on the barrel will explain what follows from that.