Hiram Walker’s Windsor plant, and the Corby company that came to rely on it.

Lot No. 40 is made at one of the oldest working distilleries in Canada. The Hiram Walker distillery in Windsor, Ontario, was established in 1858, when Walker moved there to open a flour mill and distillery, and English Wikipedia describes it as the oldest functioning distillery in the province. It stands on the Detroit River in what became the town of Walkerville, which Corby says Walker founded in 1890 as his business grew; English Wikipedia notes that during American Prohibition its position directly across the river from the United States made it a supplier to the bootleggers’ trade.

The Walker family owned the distillery until 1926, English Wikipedia says, and it has had several owners since. The company that sells Lot No. 40 has its own long history. Corby’s timeline traces it to Henry Corby, a miller near Belleville, Ontario, whose distillery was incorporated in 1859, and its later owners joined the two businesses: between 1935 and 1945, Corby says, Hiram Walker–Gooderham & Worts acquired 51% of Corby’s equity.

The links tightened over the following decades. In 1987, Corby says, the British group Allied Lyons acquired 51% of Hiram Walker–Gooderham & Worts and so became Corby’s majority shareholder. In 1989 Corby closed its own distillery at Corbyville after 132 years and moved all its maturing whisky to the Hiram Walker plant in Windsor, which has made its whiskies ever since. In 2005 the French drinks group Pernod Ricard became Corby’s majority shareholder, and the two companies signed long-term production and representation agreements; in November 2013 the company changed its name to Corby Spirit and Wine.

English Wikipedia’s article on Canadian whisky lists the brands made at the Windsor plant as including Lot 40, Pike Creek and Gooderham and Worts, and says the distillery is operated by Corby, in which Pernod Ricard holds a controlling share.

One grain, one copper still, one batch at a time.

Pernod Ricard’s description of the whisky is short and specific. Lot No. 40 is a 100% rye whisky, which the group calls one of the rare North American whiskies made from rye alone; locally grown rye is distilled “one batch at a time” in a traditional copper pot still at the Hiram Walker distillery, and the spirit is aged in virgin white oak barrels. Pernod Ricard says it was released in 2012 and follows a recipe passed down seven generations, a heritage claim that is the company’s own. Corby describes the same whisky as crafted in small batches in a single copper pot still, and the brand’s shop lists it at 43% alcohol by volume.

The name is written two ways. Corby and Pernod Ricard use Lot No. 40 on their brand pages and in their releases, while Corby’s portfolio lists and some of its statements shorten it to Lot 40.

The range has grown around the original. Corby’s release of 30 March 2021 described Lot No. 40 Dark Oak as distilled in a pot still, aged first in new oak barrels with a number 2 char and finished in a barrel with a heavier number 4 char, and bottled at 48%. Other expressions on the brand’s shop include a cask-strength series called Rye Explorations, whose fourth release was finished in Oloroso casks.

The awards are well recorded, mostly in Corby’s own releases. In that March 2021 release, Corby announced that the World Whiskies Awards had named Lot No. 40 Dark Oak the World’s Best Rye, after judging in February 2021 in which it was set against rye whiskies from the United States, Australia, Germany, England, Denmark and Ireland; the standard Lot No. 40 took a bronze medal at the same awards. The brand’s shop lists silver medals for Lot No. 40 at the Canadian Whisky Awards in 2021, 2023 and 2024, and Corby’s release of 20 January 2026 reported a gold for Dark Oak and bronzes for Lot No. 40 Single Copper Pot Still and Lot No. 40 Oloroso Cask at the 2026 awards.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all whisky, schnapps and rum names: Black Velvet, Seagram’s 7 Crown, Alberta Premium, Lot No. 40, Rumple Minze, Dr. McGillicuddy’s and Bumbu. Whisky, schnapps and rum brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from names that still carry a founder’s or a distillery’s story to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a bar rail.

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 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.

A Corby brand, made under contract in Windsor.

Lot No. 40 belongs to Corby Spirit and Wine of Toronto, which lists it among its Canadian-made whiskies alongside J.P. Wiser’s, Pike Creek and Gooderham & Worts. Corby also represents Pernod Ricard’s international brands in Canada, among them Chivas Regal and The Glenlivet.

The whisky is made for Corby rather than by it. Under production and administrative services agreements, Hiram Walker & Sons Limited produces Corby’s own brands at the Windsor plant. On 29 September 2026 Corby announced that those agreements, due to expire at the end of that month, had been extended for five years, from 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2031, and named J.P. Wiser’s and Lot No. 40 among the brands covered. The same release describes Pernod Ricard S.A. as Corby’s ultimate parent, owning indirectly more than half of its voting shares, and treats the Hiram Walker agreements as related-party transactions.

The pot-still story is told mainly through the bottle and the medals. Corby’s 2021 release quoted Scott McCreary, its brand manager for craft whisky, saying that Corby “continues to cement its reputation as the premier crafter of fine whisky,” and the company’s releases of 2021 and 2026 both place Lot No. 40 among the whiskies it uses to make that case.

The name needs a little care when searching: Lot 40 is also a township in Prince Edward Island, one of the island’s numbered lots.

For a design guide, Lot No. 40 shows how a plain lot number, a single grain and a copper still can give a whisky an identity of its own inside a large Windsor distillery that makes many brands. Compare Alberta Premium, Calgary’s 100% rye, and Chivas Regal, a Pernod Ricard blend Corby sells in Canada. For this guide we use copper, rye russet and still black with a book serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Lot No. 40’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.