About the distillery
A single place, for half a century.
Highwood whisky is made by Highwood Distillers at the same address on the same prairie since 1974. One still house, one rickhouse, one slow programme of grain and time. Privately held, fully independent, and one of the largest independent distillers in Canada, by design, not by accident.
Origin
Where it began.
A group of southern Alberta farmers built a still house in High River to prove what local wheat could become. They called it Sunnyvale, and brought in a German distiller to set the method. By 1984 it carried a new name, Highwood, after the river and the country around it. Fifty years on, the method that German distiller set is the method they run today, and the plan has never grown past the first one: distill a Canadian whisky honest enough to share with the neighbours. The neighbours have just gotten further afield. Everything else here is counted in decades.
- Founded
- 1974, as Sunnyvale
- Address
- 114-10th Ave SE
- Location
- High River, AB
- Ownership
- Caldera Inc.
Method
How it gets to the bottle.
Seven batches a week, in order, by hand. The four steps below don't change. What changes, year to year, is only what the grain asks for.
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Prairie grain.
2,500 kg of grain meets 12,000 L of well-drawn water in the mash tun under pressure. The result is 14,000 L of mash, a single batch, set straight to the fermenter.
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Copper still.
First through the beer still to 70% ABV, cut back, then through the kettle still with rectifier, the German method. Copper condensers strip the fusels, the heart stays.
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Bourbon wood.
Our long-aged whiskies sit in charred American bourbon oak, the wood that has carried the Century Reserve through the decades. The oak gives the colour, the spice, and a slow oxygen exchange. Canadian law sets a minimum of three years; we wait longer.
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Years on site.
We age in a climate-controlled rickhouse on the same site as the still. Temperature and humidity are managed so the wood gives up its tannins steadily. Five, fifteen, or twenty-five years. Never blended across vintages, never moved between buildings.
The house
The distillers of High River.
Big in our category, small in our team. That's by design. Twenty years at the helm under one master distiller, and a crew that has largely grown up with the place. The same hands that mash the grain rack the casks, then watch the rickhouse breathe through a January cold snap.
He hasn't acquired his knowledge from textbooks, but from past masters and from experimenting at the still.
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Jarrod Grant
Twenty years at the still
Calls the cuts on the spirit run. Decides when a year is honest or hurried. Signs off every blend before it touches a bottle. Twenty years of those calls, and the judgement is his alone.
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The rickhouse
Every season, someone walks the casks and tastes them through, grain, then oak, then the breath coming off the wood. A barrel goes to the line when it is ready, and waits when it isn't. Patience, as a full-time position.
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Bottling floor
Single batch, single age, bottled in the order the casks come in. The line on site, the cases out the door. The end of the cask's conversation with us, and the beginning of yours.
A short ledger, fifty-two years.
A short ledger of fifty‑two years
Founded as Sunnyvale Distillers
A group of local wheat farmers raises a distillery in High River, built to turn their own harvest into whisky.
Renamed Highwood Distillers
Renamed for the Highwood River, in the foothills nearby. New name on the door, same distillery behind it.
A Caldera company
Highwood joins the Caldera Inc. family. Family ownership, Alberta operations, and the original copper stills, all preserved.
Official Whisky of the Calgary Flames
The Saddledome pours Highwood for the first time.
Place
Where the chinook runs.
Under fifteen thousand people. Wheat one way, mountains the other, weather that arrives with its mind made up. The whisky is made where the grain is grown, and stays there the whole time.
A word
We make a slow drink, for slow company.
This is not whisky to hurry, and we would rather you didn't. Pour it for the evening that has nowhere else to be, for the conversation that runs long, for the people worth slowing down for. We are not trying to be everyone's whisky. We are trying to be the one you reach for when there's time to notice, poured for company that isn't watching the clock. Made slowly on purpose, and best met the same way.
Please drink responsibly. Highwood Distillers is a Caldera Inc. company.
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.