Eatdrink #39 January/February 2013

20 www.eatdrink.ca
Sample Canadian Club varieties from the Grand
Heritage Centre overlooking the Detroit River
dough and our whisky (even though the
company was founded and owned by an
American who never lived on our side of
the river) has become the number-one
selling rye worldwide.
FACT: Canadian Club Premium sixyear-old
whisky has sales of ten million
cases a year, making up 91 percent of the
worldwide market share, according to
Karen Smallwood, our knowledgeable tour
guide at The Canadian Club Brand Heritage
Centre. “This is what keeps the lights on,”
she chuckles as she pours us some bronze
liquid samplers. We sip and gaze out onto
the pristine grounds and the Detroit River
while surrounded by wood and marble in
the very rooms where Capone and Walker
did business. It’s something out of Mad
Men crossed with Boardwalk Empire. The
Americans are the biggest buyers of CC,
followed by us, and then the Japanese.
Smallwood says she gets many Japanese
tourists who come all the way to Windsor just
to soak in the Canadian Club experience.
FACT: “Every drop is made here, bottled
here and shipped worldwide, except for the
US-bound rye, which has to be bottled in
№ 39 | January/February 2013
the US so we ship it to Illinois for bottling,”
explains Smallwood.
FACT: The historic Heritage Centre
(which is now a popular site for weddings
and special events) was built for $100,000
in 1894 when a bottle of whisky was 6
cents. Basically, Hiram was loaded. And
he made it all on booze, the American
dream story, rising from humble grocer
to whisky maker, marrying well, and
buying American dollars low then selling
them high. He built “The Whisky Palace”
in Italian Renaissance Style, importing
marble from all over the world.
FACT: You can buy an original tenement
row house in Walkerville for $134,000. And
it’s nice. Hiram built and owned the entire
town, and “the benevolent dictator” was a
stickler for quality. “It was like winning the
lottery to get a job here,” says Smallwood.
While you owed your soul to the company
store, you did have a decent brick house
with running water, paved roads, wood
delivered, and your sidewalk shovelled.
Your kids went to the Hiram-built school,
and the town had police, fire and even a
Hiram-built bank. His trademark red brick
is impressive today as you stroll Chilver
and Wynadotte streets, eyeing the homes of
past Walker executives and workers alike.
The former offices of the Walkers are part of the
tour of the historic Canadian Club Brand Centre