Pendleton Canadian Whisky is aged for 10 years in American Oak barrels, named for one of the biggest rodeos in the country (The Pendleton Round-up) and is the official spirit of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA), which has always seemed a bit odd to me. Seems like it would / should be a bourbon. I grew up in UT and WY and attended many rodeos in my youth and the thought of cowboys, rodeos, buckin’ broncs, bulls and rodeo clowns doesn’t exactly seem like a place you’d find light blended Canadian whisky. Well, maybe in the clowns dressing room…
Americana associations aside, another interesting tid-bit about this whisky is that, being Canadian, it’s distilled in and aged in Canada, but then imported, bottled and distributed by Hood River Distillers in Hood River, OR (who also recently purchased McCarthy’s). They import it at full cask strength and then “before bottling, Hood River Distillers in Oregon adds glacier-fed spring water from Mt. Hood (Oregon’s highest peak)” to bring it down to the bottled 80 Proof. Though I’m afraid that not even Oregon’s tasty glacier water has been able to help this one out.
Pendleton Canadian Whisky Info
Region: Canada
Bottler: Hood River Distillers
Cask: Re-fill American oak
Age: 10 years
ABV: 40%
Price: $25
Pendleton Canadian Whisky Review
EYE
Dirty caramel
NOSE
Thick notes of candy corn, butterscotch, caramel flavored coffee syrup (Torani) and raw alcohol come busting out of the glass like a pissed off bull out of a chute. Give it a swirl or three, and a minute or two to open up, and some lighter notes of maple syrup, vanilla, waffle cones, sugar and corn syrup emerge, but are tempered and suppressed by the those initial four.
PALATE
Buttershots, burnt caramel, raw grain and Everclear come at ya like a kick to the face from a buckin’ bronc. It takes some doing, but once you bust this bronc some subtle notes of dark honey, raw cane sugar, cinnamon, maple syrup and edible flowers slowly emerge like timid rodeo clowns from a barrel.
FINISH
Grain alcohol takes over along with a cloying chemically artificial caramel, imitation vanilla, watery molasses, butterscotch and maple that lasts far too long.
BALANCE, BODY & FEEL
About as balanced as a last round Jenga tower with a thin watery body and an aggressive texture as it goes down.
OVERALL
The only rodeo image Pendleton Canadian Whisky conjures for me is the clowns. The nose is sickly sweet, the palate is cloying and gripping in all the wrong ways and there is a pervasive grain alcohol quality that does nothing to help it’s situation at all. It’s definitely not the first thing I’d reach for after being thrown around by a 2,000 lb bull, but I have had worse and now that this review is done it’s being put on mixer duty to live out it’s days with periodic check-ins to see how oxygen is affecting it on it’s way to empty.
SCORE: 75/100
