Highwood Distillers has received a prestigious award for its Ninety - 20-Year-Old Whisky.

The award was presented at the recent 2024 Canadian Whisky Awards in Victoria B.C.

Michael Nychyk, president of Caldera Distilling which owns Highwood Distillers says it's not the first honour they've received.

"This year we submitted Ninety 20 Year old again as a whisky, we won a gold medal for it, last year we won a gold and we were also awarded Whisky of the Year, corn variety, for this Ninety 20 year old product so we're pretty proud of what we can do here in High River with the grain, the water and the distilling that we do and obviously the people that live and work here for us," he says.

He says the original impetus for starting Highwood Distillers in 1974, originally called Sunnyvale, was the great source of raw products that were readily available in the area along with the quality of people who work at the distillery.

"The Ninety 20 is a 20-year-old whisky which means it's been aged in an oak charred cask for a minimum of 20 years, so it sits in our warehouse for 20 years until we start to turn it into the whisky that it is in the bottle. It starts as a core whisky that's aged for 20 years, then we finish it in sherry, that's where you get a fruitiness and a sweetness to the whisky, that's filtered, blended and bottled and that happens right here in High River," Nychyk says.

Nychyk says Highwood, Alberta Distillers in Calgary and Black Velvet in Lethbridge have worked hard to raise the level of Canadian whisky here in Canada and around the world.