Canadian whisky rarely gets the same attention as Scotch or bourbon, so it is worth looking at what the category managed at this year’s World Whisky Masters. The competition is run by The Spirits Business and judged blind, and the Canada flight came away with six Golds and five Silvers.
The six winners come from a broader spread of producers than the country’s reputation for big blends might suggest. Two are bottled in Vermont by a brand built on sourced Canadian rye, one is a 24 year old cask picked out by a British retailer, and the other three are long-standing Canadian names now owned in Scotland and New Orleans.
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So, let’s take a look at the Canadian winners from the World Whisky Masters 2026.
Gibson’s Finest Bold
Award: Gold
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Category: Canada
Tasting Notes: Vanilla sweetness, maple, oak, fruits, spice, rye
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READ THE STORYFind Your Next Bottle: CA$35 / £19 / US$23
John Gibson began distilling rye in Pennsylvania in 1837, and by 1856 he had bought a 40-acre riverside site at Gibsonton Mills. The name only became Canadian in 1972, when Schenley revived it using whisky distilled at its Valleyfield plant in Quebec, and William Grant & Sons bought the brand from Diageo in 2002, when it was selling around 300,000 cases a year.
Production now takes place at the Hiram Walker distillery in Windsor, Ontario.
Bold is an eight year old blend of corn, rye and malted barley whiskies bottled at 46% ABV, and master blender Brian Kinsman, of Glenfiddich and Balvenie fame, built it to be mixed with cola, which is how around 40% of Canadians drink their whisky, according to Whisky Advocate.
The judges found “stewed apples, caramel, some burnt sugar, and a little cocoa powder on the finish”.
Gibson’s Finest Rare
Award: Gold
Category: Canada
Tasting Notes: Fruit, oak, caramel custard, butterscotch, citrus zest, spiced white pepper, ginger, toffee notes, caramelized sugar
Find Your Next Bottle: CA$36 / £19 / US$24
Rare is the 12 year old in the range, bottled at 40% ABV and made in Ontario, which fits with the Windsor production mentioned above.
One point worth knowing if you go looking for older reviews is that the Rare name once belonged to an 18 year old, since renamed Venerable, so the same word covers two very different whiskies depending on the vintage of the bottle or the article.
Gibson’s took a third medal in the flight as well, with a Silver for its Sterling expression.
Seagram’s VO Black
Award: Gold
Category: Canada
Tasting Notes: Citrus, caramel, baking spice, white pepper
Find Your Next Bottle: CA$38 / £21/ US$26
Sazerax, the current owner of the Seagram’s brand, dates the original VO blend to 1913, made by Joseph E. Seagram at his Waterloo, Ontario distillery for his son’s wedding, and notes that nobody is certain what the initials were meant to stand for, with very own and very old both in circulation.
Waterloo closed in 1992 and production shifted to Valleyfield in Quebec.
The brand ended up with Diageo after the Seagram empire was carved up, and Diageo sold it to Sazerac in 2018 as part of a 19-brand package worth $550 million.
Seagram’s VO Black is bottled at 45% ABV, at a higher proof than the standard expression, and carries no age statement. It is a cheap, standard blend, but still seems to hold up with the World Whisky Masters judges. They called it “a real crowd-pleasing whisky”.
WhistlePig PiggyBack 100% Rye
Award: Gold
Category: Canada
Tasting Notes: Cinnamon, black pepper, tangerine, grapefruit zest, cocoa, cardamom, leather, vanilla, baking spice, citrus
Find Your Next Bottle: CA$56 / £43 / US$38
WhistlePig operates from a farm in Shoreham, Vermont, so its appearance in a Canadian flight takes some explaining. The whiskey is Canadian rye, reportedly bought from Alberta Distillers, and matured further before bottling in Vermont.
PiggyBack uses a 100% rye mashbill and spends six years in new charred oak. It was among the last whiskeys Dave Pickerell worked on before his death in 2018, and Breaking Bourbon points out the tributes on the packaging, with the pig wearing Pickerell’s Stetson instead of the usual top hat and his birth and death years on the neck wrapper.
The 48.28% ABV comes out at 96.56 proof, the 56 matching the year he was born.
WhistlePig Small Batch Rye Aged 10 Years
Award: Gold
Category: Canada
Tasting Notes: Allspice, orange peel, anise, oak, char, caramel, rye spice, mint, butterscotch
Find Your Next Bottle: CA$133 / £72 / US$90
This is the bottling that launched WhistlePig, five years before the Vermont farm had a working still. The early batches came from Alberta, and that WhistlePig now also buys from MGP in Indiana and has been distilling in Vermont since 2015, with the company acknowledging the mashbill has not always been 100% rye across the whole blend. On the WhistlePig website, it is introduced as “high rye”.
The whiskey is ten years old at 50% ABV, aged in new American oak and hand bottled in Shoreham.
WhistlePig picked up two more medals in the flight, with Silvers going to Old World Rye 12 and Estate Oak Rye 15.
Master of Malt Elbows Up
Award: Gold
Category: Canada
Tasting Notes: Applesauce, wood workshop, raisin scones, spice, crème brûlée, turkey gravy, rum-soaked raisins, chocolate chip cookies, creamy, custard, buttered corn, burnt brown sugar
Find Your Next Bottle: CA$112 / £59.95 / $80
Elbows up comes from hockey and from Gordie Howe in particular, and the CBC traced its revival to Mike Myers, who mouthed the words on Saturday Night Live in March 2025 while wearing a Canada is not for sale shirt as Trump pushed tariffs and talked about a 51st state. The phrase entered the Oxford English Dictionary this June.
Master of Malt, the UK retailer and bottler, put the name on a Canadian corn whisky from an undisclosed distillery, distilled in 2001 and matured in a refill sherry butt. Its head of whisky Sam Simmons, a Canadian, picked the cask, which yielded just over 900 bottles at 67% ABV, a reference to Confederation in 1867.
Master of Malt describes it as “a modest gesture to display that a people, like a whisky, needn’t be big, loud and aggressive to be strong and enviable.”
The judges described it as “bold and crisp on the palate, with vanilla and toffee”.
What Do You Make of the Results?
Six Golds went to whiskies made in three different ways. Two came from a Vermont company bottling rye distilled in Alberta, one from a British retailer who picked a single cask from a distillery it will not name, and three from long-established Canadian brands now owned in Scotland and New Orleans. Only the Gibson’s pair and Seagram’s VO Black are sold mainly to Canadians, which says something about who is currently buying Canadian whisky.
Have you tried any of these six? Are there any you would like to get hold of, and what do you make of the awards? Let us know in the comments.
