You always called it “Rye” and now it actually is.

Canadian Club Chairman’s Select Rye $24.50Cocktail nerds—God, love ’em— can be the worst people to buy for. They spend all their time researching tinctures and bitters and shrubs and muddlers and Japanese bar spoons so trying to find something that gets them excited without having to fly to Tokyo or Paris is a real task. So imagine my surprise when the good folks at Canadian Club swooped in late this fall with a bottle that excites my inner spirits nerd and does it for under $25.The funny thing is most people assume the the normal CC is already rye—it’s not. It’s Canadian whiskey, which is a product that blends al sorts of grains to achieve a smoothness that we’re famous for up here. But 100% is in many ways the opposite of smoothness—it’s spicy, it’s got a lot of shoulders and elbows and it’s not really my fave spirit to drink neat (I have a bottle of the legendary and very pricey Thomas Handy Rye that I rarely use because it’s too tough on it’s own and too expensive for cocktails). But as a cocktail ingredient, this bottle of CC is the tops. It  makes a mean Old Fashioned or manly Manhattan and it has the wow factor of being new. For under $25 you will not find a better spiritual present this season.

Neal McLennan

Neal McLennan