A Grimsby building, a winemaker and an eight-year wait.

Forty Creek is a Canadian whisky made in Grimsby, Ontario, on the Niagara Peninsula between Hamilton and Niagara Falls. English Wikipedia says the name comes from Forty Mile Creek, which runs through the town. The brand belongs today to the Italian drinks company Campari Group; the brand’s own site describes Forty Creek as a registered trademark of Davide Campari N.V.

The building is older than the whisky. The company says the Grimsby distillery was opened in 1972 by Otto Rieder, who had obtained a distillery licence in 1971 and set out to make eau de vie from Niagara’s tender fruit, carrying on the tradition of his grandfather’s distillery in Switzerland. The company adds that Rieder also made an Alpenbitter from his grandfather’s recipe, and that the original building is still the core of the site.

The whisky begins with John K. Hall. Hall told the regional wine writer behind Wines in Niagara in March 2014 that he had wanted to work for a whisky distiller after graduating but was not hired, and became a winemaker instead. His first wine job, he said, was at Chateau Gai, and he later led a management buyout of the winery group from Labatt with partners whose company became Vincor; he left that business in 1992. The same year he started Kittling Ridge in Grimsby, making wine. WhiskyCast reported in March 2014 that Hall founded the distillery in 1992 under the Kittling Ridge name while also making wine on the site.

Whisky took time. The company says Hall and Bill Ashburn, who became its master blender, joined forces in 1992 and spent eight years planning and refining the spirit, and that Barrel Select was first tasted in Canada in 2000. Wines in Niagara put it the same way in 2014: Hall began making whisky in 1992 and sold his first bottle of Forty Creek about ten years later. English Wikipedia says the brand launched with Barrel Select and a Three Grain whisky.

Separate grains, copper stills and a creek for a name.

Forty Creek’s method is the thing its makers talk about most. Market Watch reported in July 2015 that Hall distils and matures each grain separately before blending, rather than working from a single mash bill, and Gear Patrol described the same practice in November 2014: rye, corn and barley whiskies aged apart, then married. Wines in Niagara noted in 2014 that Hall used copper pot stills. The company describes Barrel Select as a blend of grain whiskies aged in a mix of seasoned ex-Bourbon barrels and new American white oak.

The range grew from there. The company says Copper Pot was released in 2007 as a bigger, bolder blend, and renamed Copper Bold in 2022; English Wikipedia instead gives 2012 for Copper Pot and the Forty Creek cream liqueur. English Wikipedia says limited, individually numbered Special Reserves began in 2007. Gear Patrol reported that Hall had barrels made from Canadian white oak for Confederation Oak Reserve, which Market Watch said marks Canada’s 1867 Confederation.

The packaging was reworked in 2022. The company says it relaunched the Forty Creek brand that year and “re-imagined all our packs,” paying homage to its Niagara roots and moving to transparent bottles so that the colour of the whisky takes centre stage, while the whiskies themselves were unchanged. The company now calls Forty Creek “Canada’s original craft whisky” and says it was “born in Niagara.”

Recognition came early. English Wikipedia, citing Whisky Magazine, says that at the 2008 Icons of Whisky Canada awards Hall was named Ambassador of the Year and Kittling Ridge Best Distiller. WhiskyCast reported in 2014 that the distillery had won Canadian Whisky of the Year at the Canadian Whisky Awards in three of the competition’s first four years, and the company says it was named Whisky Maker of the Decade at the 2020 Canadian Whisky Awards.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all mezcal, rum and whisky names: Del Maguey, Montelobos, Ilegal, Don Q, Ron Abuelo, Cruzan and Forty Creek. Spirits brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a cocktail bar.

A spirits brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its spirit is actually distilled, aged and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its spirit is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From a family company to a global drinks group.

The winery and the distillery went separate ways. Wines in Niagara reported in 2014 that Hall’s Kittling Ridge Estate Winery had been sold to Magnotta. By 2014 the whisky business traded as Forty Creek Distillery Ltd., WhiskyCast reported.

In March 2014 Gruppo Campari agreed to buy Forty Creek Distillery, its first move into Canadian whisky, WhiskyCast and The Globe and Mail reported. WhiskyCast said the purchase covered the distillery, its maturing whisky stocks and its brands, including Forty Creek and Canada Gold, that the staff would be kept on and that the deal was due to close on 2 June. Hall described the sale as part of succession planning for a family-run company and stayed on as chairman and whisky maker. Campari planned to add production capacity and take the brand to more of its markets; Market Watch reported in 2015 that Campari had widened Forty Creek’s distribution across the United States. Bill Ashburn, who had worked alongside Hall since 1992, stayed at the distillery; the Canadian trade site Poured reported in October 2025 that Forty Creek had announced his retirement as master blender.

The company’s site advertises a tasting bar for visitors at the Grimsby distillery and a yearly Whisky Weekend there. The name also needs a little care online: John K. Hall is also the name of an unrelated American-born marine geophysicist, and the brand’s own site is fortycreekwhisky.com.

For a design guide, Forty Creek shows how a Canadian whisky can build its look on a place — a creek, a fruit-growing peninsula and a 1970s eau-de-vie distillery — and then, in 2022, move to clear bottles so the whisky’s own colour does the work. Compare Wild Turkey, Campari Group’s Kentucky bourbon, and Appleton Estate, the group’s Jamaican rum. For this guide we use whisky amber, copper and oak brown with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Forty Creek’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.