A Question of Taste: Canada’s 1/11 Rule
This isn’t a courtroom; it’s the spirits world, where interpretation reigns and consensus rarely survives the pour.
A Question of Taste is where we wade into the grey areas, tackling the debates that divide distillers, bartenders, and bottle collectors alike. No final verdicts. No perfect answers. Just two sharp perspectives, a measure of bias, and the spirit of open disagreement.
This round, we’re unpacking Canada’s 1/11 rule. Is it a clever tool that gives blenders creative freedom, or a loophole that dilutes national identity? Some say it helps Canadian whisky stand out; others argue it blurs what “Canadian” even means in the glass. We’re here for both sides of the story.
Note: Our experts were assigned a side of the question to argue, however, this is not necessarily their personal stance on the subject; rather it’s meant to spark thought and conversation.
1/11 Rule Primer
The “1/11 Rule” allows whisky makers to blend up to 9.09 per cent (or one part in eleven) of another aged spirit or wine—such as sherry, port, or rum—into their whisky without losing the Canadian whisky designation. Any added spirits must be aged at least two years in wood while the base whisky must be aged a minimum of three years. Originally intended to help Canadian distillers benefit from new US tax laws, the rule has become a sometimes controversial feature of Canadian whisky production.
Pro 1/11 Rule
By: Blair Phillips
Take a deep calming breath. What makes this 9.09 per cent scorn frustrating is that the marketing departments have twisted other whisky category’s regulations into marks of quality, then disregarded Canada’s. We’ve been hypnotized into thinking mash bills, new oak, cask strength and pot stills produce superior whisky. Anything else is inferior. So, follow my swinging watch and repeat after me: the 1/11 Rule ain’t so bad.
Look at Scotch, the epitome of whisky righteousness, yet they still rejuvenate barrels with raw sherry, which soaks into the wood and then tsunamis into the whisky. What’s the difference between this and adding the sherry directly based on regulated amounts? It’s a double standard.
Focus on blenders who use the rule for good, not evil – those who apply the 1/11 rule to elevate an excellent blend into an exceptional one. Forty Creek’s The Forager! Innovative, delicious, and exciting — then imitated by whisky makers abroad with a twist to suit their regulatory narrative. The 1/11 rule broadens the Canadian blender’s flavour palette and should be celebrated. Are you listening, marketing?
I agree that the lack of transparency and ethical malpractice blows. But the entire country’s category shouldn’t be on trial for the actions of a few. 9.09 per cent sets us apart from everyone else.
Anti 1/11 Rule
By: Davin De Kergommeaux
Although Scottish distillers make fabulous, innovative whiskies from water, grain, yeast and nothing else, and Irish and American distillers do too, some Canadian blenders insist it is OK to dump in more than 68 ml of richly flavoured wine or foreign spirits for every 750 mls. That means more than a mini-bottle of each 750 ml bottle is not whisky. What happened to the tradition that a teaspoon of anything else in a barrel negates the provenance of the whole barrel? If a bottle of gin contained 68.175 mls of Vermouth, it wouldn’t be gin; it would be a dry Martini, a bottled cocktail.
Has value engineering, in its relentless obsession with profit, replaced so much flavour with plain, boring alcohol that some all-whisky whiskies have become characterless fluids, struggling desperately to be recognizable as whisky?
Is buying flavour, despite its cost, actually cheaper than making it? Is Canada’s 1/11 Rule, which allows blenders to add young, robust, flavouring whisky to exhausted base whiskies without affecting impressive age statements, too commercially seductive for some to resist? Particularly, blenders who regard whisky not as a luxury, but just a bottle of chemicals? Are Canada’s whisky-makers subcontracting flavour making to others? Yup.