Potter’s 14 1985 Cadenhead’s Authentic Collection

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Thanks to @scotchguy.to for sharing a dram of this with me.

Bit of confusion on this one. I was poured it and it was labelled as 13 years, but I can’t find that and can find a 14 year. So please excuse the confusion, as the alcohol percentage lines up.

Potter’s Distillery was out in Langley British Columbia, established in 1958 and sold liqueurs, slowly expanding into spirits. Eventually, it moved over to Kelowna BC and was bought out by Highwood Distillers in 2005, eventually closing down.

So what we had was a distillery that lasted a while and was purchased by Highwood, known for releasing a bunch of whiskies I haven’t enjoyed a whole lot. However, Potter’s was already a faint memory by the time I was getting into whisky. I missed it, didn’t know it existed. A major distillery in my own country.

Thus I’m kinda jazzed to talk about Potter’s 14 1985 Cadenheads. Cadenhead’s ended up with a few of these barrels. All of the whiskies are 100% Indian Corn whisky, something you get used to in Canada.

So let’s see how this tastes, shall we?

Price: No longer available.

Region: Canada

Vintage: 1985

Bottled: 10/1999

Cask Type: Ex-bourbon barrel

Number of bottles: 336

Abv: 56.9%

Colour: 5Y 9/6

Nose: Cinnamon, lemon candy, mineral, almond, earth

Alright right off the bat it’s the most interesting Canadian whisky I’ve had in awhile mostly just because there are cinnamon and mineral and even some almond.

The above is me being bitter at the state of Canadian whisky, of course. Let’s remove that, right off the bat. It’s very nutty, cherry somewhat, earth based. If, like me, you like nuts in your nose, then this will draw you in.

There, no issue with that at all.

Taste: Corn, rich caramel, grass, limestone, coconut, cocoa

So it’s quite evident that this is, as it stated, a corn whisky. Yay! Think Mellow Corn, but more mineral and dry. Lots of dry moments. Takes some time to really wake up, but keeps giving you some more different flavours going on.

Finish: Grass, cream corn, cinnamon, lime

The finish is a lot more of the corn and less of the interesting experiences here. Less spice, more acidity, lots of corn.

Conclusion: What an interesting blast from the past that is interesting, save for the finish that suffers from being made up of only corn. That’s the double-edged sword of all corn whisky. You get that great cinnamon note, and here they were really successful in picking out a cask that went in a cool direction.

On the other hand, corn. Corn, corn, corn. That finish was cream corn and maybe some Mexican seasonings if mom is feeling creative on Tuesday night.

All in all I’ll be looking out for casks like this to pop up and try. I’m happy to have tried this. I wish they had the chance to hit the now (still) hopefully growing market of Canadian whisky.

80/100

World Whisky review #364, Canada review #117, Whisky review #1721