Hiram Walker and Sons , with an annual capacity exceeding 55 million liters of absolute alcohol, is the largest producer of beverage alcohol in North America. Founder Hiram Walker (1816–1899) was a Detroit grocer and sixth-generation American.
Walker first sold whisky in his grocery store in 1849. By 1854, he had started making whisky by rectifying spirits distilled by others. In 1858, temperance sentiments in the United States led him across the Detroit River to Windsor, Ontario, to build a distillery on 190 hectares. Using a wooden continuous still and copper doubler, the distillery made 3,200 liters of whisky daily.
Walker is considered the first Canadian distiller to blend base whisky made from corn with flavoring whisky distilled from rye, and the first to sell whisky in bottles. He lived in Canada only four years and then commuted on the ferry that he owned from Hamtramck, Michigan. He built houses for his workers on the edge of Windsor, which quickly grew into a small town: Walkerville.
In 1867 Walker began exporting beyond North America, eventually reaching some 155 countries. As the temperance movement resurged, Walker’s heirs became concerned, and in 1926 they sold the distillery to entrepreneur Harry Hatch for half its estimated value. Hatch made it a bootlegging hub, one of the rare profitable Canadian distilleries during Prohibition. Nevertheless, sales to rumrunners rarely matched pre-Prohibition volumes. When the American stock market crashed in 1929, sales plummeted, and the distillery was said to be losing more alcohol by evaporation than sales.
In 1987, Hatch’s son, Clifford, sold the distillery to Allied Lyons (later Allied Domecq). Pernod Ricard took over ownership in 2005, while management was turned over to a Pernod Ricard subsidiary, Corby Distillers of Canada. In an unusual arrangement, while making a wide range of whiskies (including the rare malted rye) and other spirits for Pernod Ricard’s various brands, including Corby and Wiser’s, the distillery also continues to make Walker’s original Canadian Club brand, which had been sold separately and is now owned by Beam Suntory.
Canadian Club.De Kergommeaux, Davin. Canadian Whisky, Second Edition: The New Portable Expert. Vancouver: Appetite by Random House, 2017.
By: Davin de Kergommeaux