Black Velvet

The story of Black Velvet begins with the expansion of English distillers, W&A Gilbey into the North American market in 1933. They set up a distillery in Toronto, Ontario to distil their popular gin brands, however quickly sought to make a move into the Canadian whisky market. They tasked their distillers Crosbie Hucks and Jack Napier with the job of devising recipes for new brands. They settled on a blended-at-birth vatting of two whiskies, one corn and one rye mashbill and what was originally known as Black Label was first distilled in 1946.

The story goes that when Napier first sampled the aged product, he was so taken by its smooth character that he insisted its name was changed to Black Velvet. W&A Gilbey launched the brand in 1951 and it quickly became a success. The company merged with United Wine Traders in 1962 to become International Distillers & Vintners (IDV), which was acquired by the ambitious Grand Metropolitan group in 1972. The new ownership quickly invested in expansion in Canada, opening the Palliser distillery in Alberta the next year. Production of Black Velvet was moved there and the old Gilbey's Toronto plant eventually closed in the 1980s. Further investment then saw the Palliser distillery fully automated in 1991, and today the entire operation can be managed by just two employees at a time.

In 1997, Grand Metropolitan merged with Guinness to form what is now Diageo. Guinness brought its own Canadian brands to the table having acquired Schenley Industries in 1987, so Diageo sought to divest parts of its over-stuffed portfolio by an anti-trust ruling in the US. The result was the sale of several Canadian assets, including Black Velvet and the Palliser distillery to Canandaigua Brands in 1999. The company renamed themselves Constellation Brands the following year to reflect their increasingly international portfolio.

By 2009, Constellation Brands had made the decision to concentrate all of their Canadian whiskey production at the distillery in Alberta, and Palliser was renamed the Black Velvet Distilling Co in the process, after its most popular brand. Sales over the next decade remained strong, and Black Velvet was consistently second only to Crown Royal as the best-selling Canadian whisky. However, its parent company was increasingly focussed on premium rather than volume labels, and in 2019 they sold the distillery and its associated products to Heaven Hill Brands.