North of Kentucky: How Canadian Craft Distillers Stepped Into America's Bourbon Shadow
For the better part of a decade, Kentucky bourbon ruled the back bars of Canada from Vancouver to Halifax. Its arrival was no accident — aggressive marketing, an ever-expanding range of premium expressions, and a genuine allure around American whiskey culture had converted millions of Canadian drinkers. Then came 2025, and one of the most abrupt supply shocks the North American spirits trade had ever witnessed. Within weeks of escalating tariff warfare between Washington and Ottawa, the shelves that once held Maker's Mark, Buffalo Trace, and Blanton's were bare. And into that vacuum stepped a generation of Canadian craft distillers who had spent years quietly building something worth tasting.
The story of how Canada responded to losing its bourbon supply is partly political, partly economic, and entirely fascinating for anyone who follows whiskey culture seriously. It is also, for American bourbon drinkers paying attention, a cautionary tale about the fragility of trade relationships — and a genuine revelation about how much craft whisky talent has been quietly accumulating north of the 49th parallel.
The Trade War That Cleared the Shelves
In the wake of President Donald Trump's tariffs, Canadians turned their backs on U.S. spirits, opting for homegrown brands — and when Canadian liquor stores pulled American spirits off their shelves in retaliation, the fallout was significant. U.S. spirits sales in Canada plunged by more than 60% in just weeks, leaving gaps on shelves and forcing consumers to reach for Canadian alternatives. The scale of that disruption is difficult to overstate when you look at what Canada had historically meant to the bourbon industry.
Prior to 2025, Canada accounted for about 11% of U.S. distilled spirit exports, and between 2022 and 2024, Canadian imports exceeded $250 million annually, making Canada the second-largest market for American whiskey, bourbon, rum, and other distilled spirits. Losing that market virtually overnight was not a minor inconvenience — it was a structural blow to some of Kentucky's biggest names.
In the second quarter of 2025, the export of U.S. spirits to Canada tumbled 85%, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. In December, Jim Beam announced it was shutting down bourbon production at its main Kentucky distillery amid the severe dip in exports. The numbers tell the story with brutal efficiency: exports dropped from 1.4 million proof liters in February to just 0.2 million in April, and averaged less than 0.4 million proof liters per month for the remainder of the year.
Since March, provinces — including Ontario and Quebec — pulled American alcohol from their government-controlled stores, retaliating against the 25% tariff imposed by Trump on March 4th. The president and CEO of DISCUS, Chris Swonger, warned that the exclusion of U.S. spirits could cost Canadian provinces CA$500 million in lost tax revenue. Neither side walked away from the trade dispute unscathed, but the immediate beneficiaries on the ground were clear: Canadian craft distillers who had been laboring in relative obscurity suddenly found themselves at the center of a national conversation.
A Buy-Canadian Movement With Real Teeth
Ever since Trump launched his tariff war and began threatening to make Canada the "51st state," angry consumers and lawmakers united behind a "Buy Canadian" movement — and bourbon was caught in the crossfire. But unlike some consumer boycotts that fade within a news cycle, this one had institutional muscle behind it. Provincial liquor boards didn't just encourage Canadians to drink local — they made the choice for them by physically clearing American products from government-run stores.
The cultural shift went deeper than politics. According to an NIQ On-Premise Impact Report from June, 37% of consumers said they had tried a Canadian drinks brand in the past month that they hadn't tried before, with the top reason being to support local, followed by trying something new, and word of mouth. That is a meaningful number. One-third of the Canadian drinking public voluntarily exploring their domestic spirits shelf is not a protest — it is a market transformation.
A "support local" movement picked up serious steam, with CGA's Canada On Premise Consumer Pulse report revealing that for a third of consumers, it had become "increasingly important" that their drink be made by a Canadian brand compared to a year earlier. That sentiment, fused with the practical reality of bare shelves, created precisely the kind of opening that Canadian craft distillers had waited years for but never expected to arrive so suddenly.
The Craft Distillery Landscape That Was Ready — Almost
Canadian craft distilling is a younger industry than most drinkers realize, but it has grown with remarkable speed. The craft scene had exploded in just a few years — "Craft distilling is booming in Canada right now," according to author Davin de Kergommeaux, who notes the number of distilleries grew from 130 when he started writing to 253 listed in a recent book, with at least 20 more coming online since publication. Whisky is certainly prominent, with roughly half of Canadian distilleries having whisky available now or stashed away maturing.
Certain areas have emerged as important distillation centers even in a sprawling country, with Vancouver standing out as "without question the distilling hub" for Canadian craft, according to de Kergommeaux. More than the distilling infrastructure itself, the community has grown together into a genuinely collegial scene of people helping each other — and British Columbia is home to about one-third of all Canadian distilleries, with Vancouver at the center.
But the industry's growth has not come without friction. Regulatory frameworks in several provinces — particularly British Columbia — have made commercial success an uphill battle even for award-winning operations. Because steep markups are imposed on products if a distillery makes more than 50,000 litres of liquor each year, the province has effectively capped how much outfits like Okanagan Spirits and other craft distillers can produce. That structural ceiling meant many of Canada's best craft operations were already running at maximum capacity before the trade war created a demand surge they were ill-equipped to fully satisfy.
The BRBN Phenomenon: A Gold-Medal Whisky Nobody Could Find
The single most dramatic individual story to emerge from this trade disruption belongs to Tyler Dyck, the CEO of Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery in Vernon, British Columbia. Dyck's bourbon-style whisky had taken gold at the World Spirits Awards five years ago, but the sales boost from that recognition was nothing compared to what happened in the hours after the Canada-U.S. trade war prompted several provinces to clear Kentucky bourbon off of liquor store shelves.
Sales surged 2,200 percent. That is not a typo. In a matter of days, a distillery that had been operating in relative regional obscurity — known mainly to serious whisky enthusiasts and award show judges — became the talk of the Canadian spirits world. Dyck, sitting at the bar in his Okanagan Spirits distillery, was surrounded by stacks of boxes loaded with bottles of BRBN — bourbon is by definition made in the U.S., so this Canadian version carries a different name — ready to be shipped to customers.
The product itself is the real story. BRBN is rooted in the traditions of bourbon production, following every time-honored standard from cornfield to bottle, beginning with a mash bill of 54% grain corn and 46% malted barley harvested from the Coldstream Valley just west of the Vernon distillery, then resting for a minimum of five years in hand-selected virgin white oak casks — heavily toasted and medium-charred — which infuse the whisky with notes of caramel and vanilla while lending it a deep, rich auburn glow.
The distillery also produces a darker, more intense expression. The BLK BRBN Cask Strength expression is defined by a unique mash bill of 54% grain corn and 46% chocolate malted barley, distilled in German copper-pot stills, resting for over seven and a half years in custom toasted and charred virgin American white oak, and bottled at a potent 52% ABV. The BLK BRBN actually originated from a "happy accident" — a batch of overmalted corn that a collaborating malting company sent over — leading to the creation of an exceptional dark, chocolatey expression. That serendipity produced one of the most talked-about Canadian whisky expressions of the decade.
Despite the accolades, getting Okanagan Spirits products onto standard liquor store shelves has remained maddening. Sitting amid stacks of boxes ready for shipping, a collaborator marvels at the red tape that makes direct sales necessary: "The fact that Canadians can't go into the liquor store to get their hands on this fantastic stuff — it is kind of crazy to me." The regulatory absurdity of a 2,200-percent sales surge being processed primarily through direct shipping rather than conventional retail is the kind of detail that illuminates how dysfunctional Canadian spirits regulation has been for craft producers.
Other Distilleries Stepping Into the Void
Spring Mill and the Ontario Approach
Among the craft distillery upstarts finding success, Ontario's Spring Mill Distillery stands out for making American-style straight whiskey — a deliberate targeting of bourbon-drinking palates that places the brand squarely in the path of displaced consumers. Ontario represents a massive market opportunity: the LCBO is responsible for distributing alcohol to nearly 40% of Canada's population, pulling in gross revenue of $7.4 billion in 2023. With American products gone from its 3,600-plus U.S. product listings, the opening for domestic producers has been historic.
The LCBO noted that Ontario-made spirits saw a sales boost of 4.5% between February 9 and September 6, 2025, compared to the same period the prior year — while Alberta-made spirits saw an even larger increase of 13%. Those numbers, while they might seem modest on paper, represent a genuine acceleration of a trend that had been building before the trade war but was dramatically compressed by it.
Bridgeland's "Berbon" and Calgary's Corn Country
In Calgary, Bridgeland Distillery found its own angle on the bourbon-substitute market with a product called Berbon — a corn-based whisky made from Taber corn, the celebrated sweet corn grown in southern Alberta's particularly fertile growing region. The distillery produces popular brandies and whiskies, including the corn-based Berbon, with the Berbon and a related corn mash spirit together making up about 50% of sales for the seven-year-old operation.
Bridgeland's story also illustrates the regulatory minefields that Canadian craft distillers navigate even as they try to capitalize on their moment. On June 27, 2025, the owners were informed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that a complaint had been filed about their spirits — specifically the Taber corn bourbon, spelled B-E-R-B-O-N — with the CFIA indicating they were "trying to mislead customers into thinking it was a bourbon." The distillery made corrections to social media posts to comply with CFIA's concerns but hadn't had to change actual bottle labels, since the spirit is sold as Berbon. It is a case study in the absurdity of nomenclature rules colliding with genuine consumer demand for something that tastes like bourbon but isn't legally permitted to carry that name.
Quebec and the East: Cirka and Beyond
In Quebec, Cirka — the province's first grain-to-bottle distillery — has drawn attention as one of the craft upstarts finding success in the new landscape. Quebec's SAQ, the provincial liquor board, has been watching the category closely. The SAQ's spirits category director Simon Bourbeau noted: "I don't see any big movement in the long term; maybe the whisky category will be impacted because people have discovered Canadian whisky and more Scotch." That cautious optimism from a provincial board director is notable — even the gatekeepers of the regulated market are acknowledging that something structural may have shifted.
Toronto's Craft Scene Takes Its Turn
Toronto's distilling roots run deep, tracing back to the 19th century when the Distillery District housed North America's largest distillery, and today the city boasts a thriving craft spirits scene — with recent changes at the LCBO that removed U.S.-made alcohol from shelves making local distilleries even more vital. Operations like Nickel 9 Distillery and Last Straw Distillery in the Toronto area have benefited from the surge of interest in local alternatives, with Last Straw's grain-to-glass philosophy and range of small-batch whiskies positioning it well for a consumer base suddenly motivated to explore what Ontario can produce.
What Actually Separates Canadian Bourbon-Style Whisky From the Real Thing
For American bourbon drinkers curious about these Canadian expressions, understanding the regulatory and production differences matters. First, a fundamental legal distinction: bourbon, by U.S. federal law, must be made in the United States. Bourbon requires at least 51% corn in its mash bill, with other grains used as flavor grains and malted barley for fermentation — though it can even be made with 100% corn using enzymes. Canadian whisky has no grain requirement and traditionally uses rye and corn.
That regulatory flexibility has historically been both Canadian whisky's greatest freedom and its commercial albatross. As Bryce Parsons, CEO and distiller of True Wild Distilling in Calgary, puts it: "Very simply, Canadian whisky is known globally as being a high-quality, low-value commodity whisky that is smooth and approachable but challenged by not having the exciting profiles we see in Scottish, American or even Irish whisky." That reputation for smoothness without complexity is exactly what the new wave of bourbon-style Canadian expressions is trying to dismantle.
The terroir argument, meanwhile, is more compelling than most American bourbon drinkers might expect. Whether you prefer Scottish whisky or American bourbon, there's a good chance the grain used to make both liquids came from the same place — Canada, the third-largest grain supplier in the world and the second-largest malted barley producer, which is often overlooked for its contribution to the spirits world, with Alberta referred to as North America's grain basket. In other words, Canadian craft distillers aren't working with inferior raw materials — they're working with the same grain that fuels much of the world's finest whisky, now distilled and aged at home rather than exported as a commodity.
The flavor profile comparison between Canadian bourbon-style expressions and their Kentucky counterparts is where things get genuinely interesting. As de Kergommeaux describes Kentucky bourbon: "It doesn't taste like traditional Canadian whisky at all. It's a big, bold whisky, and quite bright, quite sweet." The best Canadian expressions chasing that profile — particularly Okanagan's BRBN and BLK BRBN — have gotten closer than critics expected. The BLK BRBN's tasting notes read like a bourbon lover's checklist: waves of dark chocolate, glazed cherry, and ripe fig, followed by layers of caramel, vanilla and deep toasted oak on the palate.
The Premium Gap — and How Found North Is Closing It
One persistent challenge for Canadian craft whisky has been the premium tier. Canadian whisky is generally more affordable, and while there is a greater consumer affinity for premium and higher-priced bourbon and American whiskeys, Canadian whiskies don't have as many premium products — and those that exist aren't as large in volume. Canadian whisky tends to appear more in the well than on the back bar where bourbons live.
Found North is one of the brands working hardest to change that. Hands down considered by some the best Canadian whisky money can buy, Found North was launched by brothers Nick and Zach Taylor in 2021, with the duo envisioning a brand that could appeal to bourbon drinkers and Canadian whisky fans alike — incorporating the best blends of corn and rye alongside unique cask finishes rarely seen in the Great White North.
Rather than focus on a flagship product, Found North releases a handful of numbered batches each year that flirt with various age statements and high ABVs. A recent standout was Batch #008, a blend of 18- and 26-year whiskies aged in a combination of Madeira, new American, ex-bourbon and Hungarian oak barrels, producing rich flavors of raspberry, buttercream, baking spice and caramel alongside a brûlée finish. Batch #007 traded the sweetness for punchy flavors of clove, Hungarian oak and currants. For a bourbon collector used to hunting Pappy Van Winkle or George T. Stagg, the Found North model — limited numbered batches, serious age statements, additive-free production — should feel immediately familiar.
The Established Names: Corn-Heavy Blends for Bourbon Refugees
Not every Canadian bourbon alternative comes from a craft startup. Legacy bourbon drinkers have been leaning into Canadian whiskies with corn-heavy recipes, which provide a similar flavor to American counterparts — including J.P. Wiser's from Pernod, Forty Creek from Gruppo Campari, and Caribou Crossing from Sazerac, a higher-end offering with a bottle shape that recalls bourbon stalwart Blanton's. That last detail — a bottle designed to evoke one of bourbon's most iconic shapes — speaks to how deliberately some producers have positioned themselves to catch displaced Blanton's hunters.
As de Kergommeaux notes: "It will never be Kentucky bourbon, but now people are trying them and find it makes a good Old Fashioned." That may be the most honest and useful piece of guidance for any American bourbon drinker curious about what Canada has built. These are not imitations — they are different spirits with their own merit, made by people who know exactly what category they're competing in.
Will the Shift Stick? The Long-Term Question
The central debate among industry observers is whether the 2025 trade disruption created permanent change in Canadian drinking habits or merely a temporary detour. Whether the trends represent a long-term shift remains up in the air — SAQ's Simon Bourbeau says he doesn't see any big movement in the long term, though the whisky category may be impacted because people have discovered Canadian whisky. Meanwhile, Spirits Canada's president Cal Bricker points out that local consumers will still seek out spirits that can't be made in their own country, noting that "there is a strong demand for Bourbon in Ontario."
The more optimistic read comes from de Kergommeaux himself, who has spent a career studying the Canadian whisky category with the rigor of someone who knows it can compete on the world stage. "People still talk about it and want it," he says of bourbon, "but you're going to see a long-term boost in sales of Canadian spirits. People will look more favorably on Canadian products going forward. Some people are developing favorites, and sales will remain high even after all of this nonsense settles down."
Bartenders and sommeliers are becoming more well-versed in Canadian whisky "because they have to," as one bar consultant notes — but the implication is that the education, once acquired, doesn't simply disappear when Kentucky bourbon returns to the shelves. The on-trade professionals who spent 2025 building Canadian whisky cocktail programs and recommending domestic expressions to curious regulars have developed knowledge and relationships with those products that outlast any political dispute.
The data through mid-2025 offered early confirmation of that thesis. NIQ's On-Premise Measurement tool data for the 12 weeks ending July 12 showed locally made whisky held a higher share of volume and value sales of the total whisky category than American whiskey in the Canadian on-trade — Canadian whisky held a 40% share of total whisky by volume versus 25% for American whiskey, and by value, Canadian whisky had a 35% share to American whiskey's 25%. Those are not the numbers of a category temporarily filling a gap. They are the numbers of a category asserting dominance.
What It Means for American Bourbon Drinkers
For Americans watching this story from the Kentucky side of the border, the immediate takeaway is sobering. Canada's boycott cut off the biggest export market for American whiskey and wine — and Canadian producers are thriving. The trade dispute that American politicians may have assumed would leave Canada scrambling instead gave Canadian craft distillers the single greatest marketing opportunity in the history of their industry.
But there is a secondary lesson worth absorbing: the Canadian craft whisky scene that rose to meet this moment was not built overnight. The distilleries producing BRBN, Berbon, and Found North batches had been grinding for years — mastering grain sourcing, barrel programs, and distillation techniques — before their political windfall arrived. Okanagan Spirits, for instance, first opened its doors in 2004 and was the only liquor producer in British Columbia at the time; attitudes and legislation changed in 2013, making it easier for craft distilleries to set up shop, and since then many have — but Okanagan had already spent years carving the way for a rapidly growing whisky industry.
For the American whiskey enthusiast willing to look north with an open mind, Canada now offers a legitimate alternative drinking universe — one with its own distinct heritage, its own grain basket, its own award-winning distillers, and its own increasingly sophisticated approach to the corn-and-oak combination that bourbon drinkers love. While substitutes like BRBN and Berbon may not taste quite the same as Kentucky bourbon, many are quality whiskies that work well in a Manhattan or sipped straight with a couple drops of water. That's not a consolation prize. For a drinker with a genuinely curious palate, it's an invitation.
The geopolitical disruption of 2025 may or may not be remembered as a turning point in North American whisky history. What is already clear is that Canadian craft distillers used the chaos constructively. They built audiences, sold out production runs, demonstrated the quality of their grain-to-glass programs, and — perhaps most importantly — proved to a generation of Canadian consumers that the best whisky in their lives doesn't have to cross a border to reach their glass.
