Our Story

Canadian whisky,
made different.

Crafted on Vancouver Island with Scottish tradition, wild Pacific terroir, and the backing of 700 whisky lovers from coast to coast.

Vancouver Island

The island is the ingredient

Macaloney's is one of a rare breed of island distilleries. Our home on Vancouver Island isn't just a location. It's an active participant in every bottle we produce. Mineral-rich water feeds our mash tun. Salt-laden Pacific air circulates through our cask warehouses. And the ancient peat bogs and wild kelp forests along our coastline provide flavours you simply can't find anywhere else.

This is Canadian whisky rooted in a very specific place, where old-growth rainforest meets the Pacific Ocean and the terroir shapes the spirit as much as the craft does.

Founded by 700 Canadian whisky enthusiasts. Before crowdfunding was even a thing.

The Craft

Scottish roots, Canadian made

Our distillery was designed from the ground up by three Scottish whisky makers who brought decades of knowledge from Scotland's finest distilleries to the west coast of Canada. The approach was simple: take the best of what Scotland has perfected over centuries (hand-hammered Forsyth's copper pot stills, traditional mashing and fermentation techniques, world-class cask sourcing) and let Vancouver Island's unique character do the rest.

The casks tell their own story. Kentucky bourbon barrels. Spanish Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez sherry. Portuguese red wine barriques. Each one selected from cooperages that also supply some of Scotland's most revered distilleries. Combined with the finest Canadian barley, the result is a whisky that honours tradition without being bound by it.

Today, our founder Graeme Macaloney is still in the distillery every day, tinkering with new cask combinations, experimenting with new expressions, and pushing the boundaries of what Canadian single malt can be. That restless curiosity is how we ended up with over 29 distinct whiskies and counting.

And unlike many Canadian whisky brands that are ultimately owned by multinational conglomerates, Macaloney's is fully Canadian owned and operated. No foreign parent company. No offshore shareholders. Just a team on Vancouver Island making whisky the way it should be made.

The three founding whisky makers raising a dram in front of Macaloney's copper pot stills

Our founding whisky makers at the Forsyth's copper pot stills.

The Peat Project

Exploring what Canadian peat can do

Peat-smoking is an ancient art practised by only a handful of distilleries worldwide. We built the world's first purpose-designed peating soaker-smoker right here on Vancouver Island and started asking questions nobody else was asking.

What happens when you smoke with Washington peat versus Scottish Islay peat? What does peat hand-dug from the bogs near Sooke taste like? What if you infuse local Pacific sugar kelp into the peat itself?

The Peat Project is our ongoing experiment in terroir and merroir, the taste of the land and the sea. We source peat from Washington State, Islay in Scotland, and right here on Vancouver Island near Sooke, with our first Sooke peat expression coming soon. Every release is a snapshot of a specific place, a specific coastline, a specific combination of smoke and earth and ocean. It's the kind of whisky that could only come from here.

The Macaloney's team hand-harvesting peat from the bogs near Sooke on Vancouver Island

Hand-harvesting peat from the bogs near Sooke, Vancouver Island.

The Community

Built by a crowd, before crowdfunding

Macaloney's didn't start with big investors or inherited money. It started with a cross-Canada tour through whisky clubs, from Halifax to Vancouver, and a simple pitch: help us build a world-class Canadian single malt distillery. Over 700 people said yes, putting their money where their dram was. That was before crowdfunding platforms even existed in Canada.

That community-first DNA is still at our core. Our tasting room in Saanich is as much a gathering place as it is a bar. Our whisky club members get first access to new releases. And every bottle we ship is, in a very real sense, a bottle that hundreds of Canadians helped make possible.

23+
Individual gold medal awards
3×
"World's Best"
London, UK from World Whiskies Awards
700+
Founding investors
from coast to coast
2026
World's Best Craft distiller
What We Stand For

Three things in every bottle

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Real Ingredients

The finest Canadian barley. Pure island water. Casks from the same cooperages that supply Scotland's top distilleries. No flavouring. No shortcuts. No compromise.

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Traditional Process

Hand-hammered Forsyth's copper pot stills. Triple distillation techniques brought from Ireland and Scotland. Distilled slowly. Matured patiently. Bottled when it's ready.

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Sense of Place

Every expression reflects Vancouver Island: its water, its air, its peat, its kelp, its coastline. Terroir isn't a marketing word here. It's what you taste.

Come taste the island

Visit our distillery and tasting room in Saanich, just outside Victoria. Take a tour, try a flight, or just grab a pint from our onsite brewery. We're open Wednesday to Sunday.

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