Crown Royal was born as a gift. In 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth made the first visit to North America by a reigning British monarch, and Samuel Bronfman of Seagram created a whisky worthy of the occasion — presenting it in a purple velvet bag with gold drawstring, a detail that's survived nearly nine decades. It stayed available only in Canada until 1964, and is now the best-selling Canadian whisky in the world. Production happens in Gimli, Manitoba, a town of under 2,000 on the western shore of Lake Winnipeg — settled by Icelandic immigrants who named it for the Norse "safe haven from hellfire," and still home to the largest Icelandic population outside Iceland. The distillery spans 360 acres with 51 warehouses holding roughly 1.5 million barrels, more barrels of whisky than there are people in Manitoba. The house method is blending: fifty distinct whiskies made from corn, rye, and barley across different distillation techniques, married into the signature smooth profile of vanilla, caramel, and light oak. The flagship Deluxe has taken five golds at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, and in 2016 Northern Harvest Rye became the first Canadian whisky ever named World Whisky of the Year in Jim Murray's Whisky Bible, scoring a record-tying 97.5.

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