Today I did a blind tasting with members of the 6-Day distillery Workshop. I served up samples of the Whiskies pictured above taking care to have diluted each sample to 30% alcohol for proper evaluation. The Whisky on left is the very popular Alberta Premium made by Beam Suntory subsidiary Alberta Distillers. The middle product is a recent entrant onto store shelves. The 6 year old distillate is purchased from Collingwood Distillers in Ontario and given a further year of ageing in Kelowna, BC in ex-bourbon casks, ex-red wine casks and Hungarian oak casks. The product on right is a small batch whisky made by Shelter Point Distilling in Campbell River, BC on traditional pot stills. The class comments were uniform. The Shelter Point product was deemed to have the best mouth-feel and finish. The Bearface exhibited good oak character, but was lacking in body and texture. The Alberta Premium was the least appreciated of all with comments indicating a certain harshness on the palate. I later pointed out to the class that the Shelter Point product is a pot distilled whisky – hence its good mouth-feel. The other two products are column distilled which removes far too much flavor from the distillate. This tasting exercise supports what I have been long saying – if you are going to make a Whisky, then make it on a pot still using the double pot distillation technique.