Canadian Whisky, Macaloney’s the Island Distillery (4th one, Tastings #43)

Canadian Whisky Tasting (May 2nd , 2025)

This is our 4th Canadian Whisky Tasting.  It was a dedicated Macaloney’s Island Distillery Tasting.  The bottles in question were;

This was our 4th Canadian Whisky tasting, and our 1st, doing a dedicated single Canadian distillery tasting.  The 3rd Canadian Whisky tasting was April, 2024, the 2nd Canadian Whisky tasting was in January 2022, and the 1st Canadian Whisky tasting was October 2020.

We had 17 people on Zoom, and thankfully everyone voted individually.  We lost 2, due to last minute no shows (Frank, JP), otherwise we’d have 19.

Most, if not all, of these bottles are not available in the US, so I can’t really do a US dollar comparison, since no one stocks them, in the US, that I’ve found.

This tasting was by no means their entire product line.  But I did speak to their VP Marketing, who suggested a good cross section of their line.  So I included two triple distilled bottles (Irish Whiskey style), 3 “Classic Scotch” styles, ie no peat, with different cask finishes, and 3 “peated Scotch” styles, in varying amounts of peat (11 ppm, 27ppm, and 55 ppm).

Macaloney’s has an interesting story, it was originally Macaloney’s Caledonian (old world name for Scotland), but it was considered to be trying too hard to be “Scotch”, so they agreed to drop the Caledonian portion of their name. If you look in the picture, I did get one bottle that has the old name (Invermallie), and one sticker (Oaken Poitin), with the old name as well.

I know in a proper tasting you should go sweet, to peated, but as a group we like to ‘guess’ which is which, based on tasting notes.  So the peated and the classic, and the Irish whiskey style were all mixed up, by design.

There are no age statements on Macaloney’s bottles, nor in their marketing, its a 10 yr old distillery, so according to their VP marketing, they’re about 5 years old, most of the product.

I included an Ardbeg “Wee Beastie”, which has 40-50ppm of peat, identified by peat, but not named, as a separate bottle.  The group agreed to try it after “F”, to see how it fared, side by side with the 55ppm of the Macaloney’s.  Ardbeg Wee Beastie is also a 5 yr old Scotch Whisky.  I called it “I” in the ratings.

In terms of guessing the bottles.  We did it a bit different, we asked for the group to guess which 2 were Irish Whiskey style, which 3 were classic Scotches, and which 3 were peated Scotches.  Then we asked for them to identify all, if desired.

So Mike M got all 3 classic Scotches. Rox and Alison R both got the Irish Whiskey ones correct.  David W and Martin D both got the peated Scotches correct.

In terms of naming the bottles, David W got 4, Alison R, and Marco got 3.

This one, was a fun one, I must admit, I love the diversity of the product line.

I had to include this picture, I really love their boxes, a true rainbow of colors.

The Winners!

As a group, we seem to like Irish Whiskey, and the sweeter Scotches.  Some did like the 55ppm Scotch, although as a group, it placed last.

Tied in 1st place was Cath Nah Aven, a classic Scotch, with premium Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez casks from Andalucia in Spain. It results in a very dark color, and very tasty whisky.  It was my favorite as well.  Kildara the Irish Whiskey style came in 1st as well, with the 2nd Irish Whiskey style, Oaken Poitin, as a close 3rd (8.12 vs 8.06).  For all intents and purposes, it was a 3 way tie for 1st..

1st Place (8.1), $105

1st Place (8.1) $115

2nd Place (8.1) $110

The next Tasting will be Bourbon Tasting in Sept, 2025

The Survey Results