First Edition 2026 By the Distillers
Three Highwood bottles in prairie grass at golden hour
Since 1974
An Almanac of the Foothills
50° 35′ N · 113° 52′ W

Where the prairie meets the Rockies, whisky waits.

A Canadian whisky of uninterrupted prairie and one ridge of Rockies. Three ages. No shortcuts.

Estd.
1974
Lineage
5 · 15 · 25
Bottled in
High River
The Almanac
I A Manifesto

Of weather, water, and patience.

There is a certain kind of place that doesn't ask to be discovered. It keeps to itself, prefers a long winter to a short one, would rather be unfashionable than wrong, and trusts the work will speak when the work is finished. High River, Alberta is one of those places. We've been distilling here since 1974, in a building that hasn't moved, on a piece of prairie that didn't need our help to look like itself.

The recipe, if you can call it that, is the climate and what grows in it. Cold, dry summers. Long, settled winters. Wheat and corn from local farms. Water drawn from our own well, cool from beneath the foothills. Nothing in the bottle the year didn't make.

No additives. No shortcuts. Time in the cask does the work. We just keep the building open and the casks closed. Five years. Fifteen. Twenty‑five. Nothing rushed, nothing finished early. This is a small almanac of those years.

The Distillers, of High River By year, by bottle, by hand.

Time is the only flavour.
We don't add it; we wait for it.

II The Lineage

Three ages, one prairie.

Three bottles raised by the same prairie. Wheat at five years, wheat and corn at fifteen, corn alone at twenty-five. The grain shifts as the years stack; the prairie does not. Each bottle pours as itself, never blended, never hurried.

Distilled, aged, and bottled in High River, Alberta. Bottle for bottle, the same little place.

Alberta prairie at dusk with the Canadian Rockies in deep indigo silhouette
III The Land

A fold of prairie the mountains made.

Foothills country, between the prairie and the Rockies. The well is ours, recharged each winter by snow off the range. The climate is the recipe. Cold enough to lock the spirit into the wood, warm enough through August to pull it back out, year over year, until the cask gives up its colour.

Latitude
50.58° NHigh River
Elevation
1,052metres above sea level
Annual Snowfall
137centimetres, settled
Mean January
−13°celsius, locked-in
Growing Days
116for our grain
IV Since 1974

A small distillery, in no hurry.

Highwood has been Canadian‑owned, Alberta‑run, and family‑held for half a century. Small on purpose. Slow on principle.

The first cask went into the rickhouse in April of 1974, three weeks after the snow finally went. The distillery looked then much like it does now: a low building, a copper still, a row of warehouses with their doors propped open to the south wind.

We have changed almost nothing. Not the building. Not the still. Not the climate, which we wouldn't know how to change anyway. The names of the people on the floor have shifted, slowly, the way names do in a small town: a son after a father, a niece after an aunt.

The half‑century taught us we are keepers more than makers. What we are good at, after all this time, is noticing what to leave alone.

Our job, mostly, is to not get in the way.

The Family
Custodians, Highwood
Inside a Highwood rickhouse: aged oak casks stacked on pallets, cooper's chalk markings on the foreground head.
The Highwood Rickhouse.
Close detail of ripe Alberta barley at harvest
V The Craft

Grain to glass.
One piece of land.

A whisky cannot be hurried. It can only be tended: the field walked, the mash watched, the cut made by hand, the cask kept even, and the bottle filled by the people who put it down. Five steps, one place, nothing skipped.

  1. I · The Field

    Ground fresh grain.

    On the right morning the whole building smells of cut grain. It arrives whole, leaves the mill as meal, and is in the mash before the smell has cleared. This year's, from local farms, ground here.

    120days of summer
  2. II · The Mash

    Soft prairie water.

    In the tun, hot water pulls the sugar from the fresh meal, soft enough that it comes slow and clean, never scalded. What runs off is sweet and pale, then left three quiet days to ferment before it is anything like whisky.

    72hours, settled
  3. III · The Still

    Twice through copper.

    Twice through the copper: once in the pot to take the rough off, once in the column to lift it clean, then back to the pot to finish. The heart is kept, the heads and tails let go. Every cut made by hand, by feel, on a judgement no gauge can make.

    1974same copper
  4. IV · The Rickhouse

    The steady dark.

    The weather gets no vote here. The rickhouse is held at a steady temperature and humidity, so charred American oak gives up its colour and spice evenly, year after year, for as long as the whisky needs. The cask it enters is the cask it leaves.

    5–25winters
  5. V · The Bottle

    Bottled by hand.

    At the end it comes back to a few pairs of hands: each bottle filled, corked, and checked by the people who put the cask down. Same building, same hands, years apart. That is the whole of it.

    Onesmall place
VI End Matter

A small almanac, closed for now.

The almanac closes here. The distillery does not. Below: where to find a bottle, how to visit, and a line for the trade and the press.

By post

A letter from High River.

Twice a year a printed note finds its way to a small mailing list. Release news, the date a cask comes down, an invitation when one is open. Posted, not pixelled.

Address used only for our own occasional mailings. Held in confidence, never sold.