Confederation oak reserve
As a young child in the early 80’s when I used to masturbate to soap operas and thigh master commercials in the afternoon, there was a certain theme of ‘who gives a fuck?’ for television shows. From what I remember of being raised in the 80’s it was this magical time where you were either high as shit and rich, or you were cross dressing in a band. If you were alive in the 80’s, shit was pretty tight. Everybody seemed to be eating the same gigantic roofie for ten years and whatever we did didn’t really matter. If it was bright, flashy and had some cool futuristic theme or was just way too grandeous, things were going to turn out ok.
…unless you had anything to do with airwolf. This isn’t seawolf, or extraterrestrialwolf or even middle earthwolf, it was airwolf. The animal selection could have used a little work, mind you this is the time before micheal Crichton created raptors or that guy created sharknados, or even my own sharknado spin-off called sinead-o. sinead-o is the exact same thing as sharknado, but with all types of sinead o‘connors. you know, the bald one, the anti pope atheist one, the fat one… the list of sinead o’connor diversity is… well, limited at best.
While my parents were away at drunken coke fuelled swinger orgies(it WAS the 80’s), they left me with my grandparents who would occasionally let me stay up late to watch some primetime tv, in between listening to their casually racist and homophobic remarks about the neighbours. My favourite show was airwolf, because it was chock full of cheesy stock footage of explosions and high-tech weapons on a war machine death merchant-helicopter. It was even equipped with nuclear warheads for fucks sake!
Airwolf was a futuristic helicopter from the 1990’s. it was bulletproof, explosion proof, death ray proof and even iguana proof. Airwolf spent a lot of time taking out Libyan terrorist footmen camping in tents, or other small factions with little funds or firepower or armor so airwolf had no problem shredding infantry with its warheads it could launch from 5 miles away. Airwolf also fought enemies like redwolf, airwolf 2 and an exploding volcano… hold on a sec{{{“hey guys! Am I reading this right? Airwolf ‘fought’ a volcano? Yes? A fucking volcano? Alright”}}}, ahem, so, yeah, airwolf fought a volcano. The toughest enemies airwolf ever faced were fan base, ratings, budget, any reason to exist, etc.
The main character was named airwolf. Remember? It’s the helicopter. The other characters, who were in almost every episode, but were not main characters consisted of ron burgundy, ernest borgnine and some dude casted as stringfellow hawke. Stringfellow was the pilot who flew airwolf. In his off time, we found stringfellow serenading an eagle on a lake he hermitted on with a cello. Seriously.
The best part of airwolf is that because we were in the 80’s and our only national enemies in north America were aids and fictional terrorists, airwolf never felt the need to take over Canada or destroy our vast expanses of forest and snow. Good thing too, because if airwolf destroyed our forests john hall wouldn’t have been able to create forty creeks confederation oak reserve from Canadian white oak.
Alc. 40%
Bottle:
No surprises, this is the same flat clear glass bottle sporting a wax crest that marks all the other limited edition bottles from forty creek. Its comfortable, classy.
Nose:
Sweet, thick vanilla and toffee. Burnt char, oak and lumberyard. Grilled pineapple and dark robust charred corn. Sweet tart candies. Fresh strawberries.
Palate:
Spicy creamed corn immediately finishing off with cinnamon hearts, nutmeg and blazing pepper. Lifts off the palate cotton soft with sap cured pith, turning pleasantly bitter. The finish is long and smooth. Mesquite and coconut.
Overall:
A well built whisky. incredible nose and taste. Very well rounded. A must have.
Please note:
This whisky is a blend of specialty select barrels of single grain whiskies. the single grain whiskies are left to marry in Canadian white oak barrels, which were found 40 miles away from john halls back yard.
There was some confusion when the whisky was being finished, which narrowly averted disaster. After a year of marrying in the new Canadian oak barrels, john found the whisky to taste horrible, like pencil shavings, he was quoted as saying. Luckily after three years in the barrels, he was very fortunate to pull out a whisky this high of caliber, rather than have to re-distill this aged product and start over.
Confederation oak follows johns staunch of ‘finishing barrels’. Sure almost all johns whiskies follow this gimmick of being a great whisky with a consistent house style, but is finished in a different method to make it a somewhat unique creation. John succeeds. This is an outstanding whisky that is a vanilla packed ride backed with pleasant dry rub spices and steakhouse flavours.
The oak picked out to make these finishing barrels is Canadian white oak. Because of our harsh climates, our oaks tend to grow very dense grain structure, which isn’t always optimum for grain/wood interaction.
The approach to selecting the oak to craft these barrels specifically was to pick out some trees scheduled to be fell. the trees were thought to have started growing when canada had just become a confederacy, noting the lot number for this bottling is 1867-. The project is aptly named ‘no tree before its time’ meaning that when a tree has lived its long life and given everything it can, it is put to rest so that new life can take over in its spot. The new life being new oak trees to replenish the ones before it.
The confederation oak is finished in virgin and used Canadian oak casks anywhere from 6 months to 2 years, typically and enters at 67.6%abv. There are varying degrees of flavor from one batch of confederation oak to the next.
canadian whisky enthusiast 