In 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth made history when they became the first reigning monarchs to visit Canada, arriving by boat and traveling the vast North American distance by train. Upon hearing the historic news, a Canadian spirits entrepreneur set out to craft a whisky suited for the Royal Couple – an exceptionally generous gift fit for royalty. With perfection on his mind, he meticulously trialed more than 600 blends before outfitting the final product in a cut-glass decanter and regal purple bag with gold stitching. The whisky he presented to the King and Queen was an exquisitely smooth blend of roughly fifty whiskies which became known, fittingly, as Crown Royal. The train carrying the monarchs was stocked with 10 cases of the royal blend and rumors of the unrivaled whisky fit for a King quickly spread. Crown Royal was released in the United States in the 1960s and has since become the top selling Canadian whisky. To this day, every drop of Crown Royal is crafted to meet the same uncompromising standards, making it, to many discerning palates, the finest whisky of all.

Nestled along the western shore of Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba lies the small village of Gimli which is home to 1.5 million barrels of delicious whisky and 76 individuals who distill, mature, and blend Crown Royal just like the generations before them.

The process of making the finest, smoothest Canadian Whisky starts with the finest Canadian ingredients. These resilient natural ingredients were born to weather the challenging conditions of subzero temperatures and the extreme temperature swings inside our re-used charred oak maturing barrels.

With such a large operation located near one of the world’s largest freshwater lakes, Crown Royal is committed to minimizing the impact of its distillery on the environment and reducing carbon emissions.