Canadian Club Brand Centre (Photo from website)
Say it ain't so.
Beam Suntory, the multinational spirits giant that owns the Canadian Club brand, recently announced plans to close the historical Canadian Club Brand Centre at 2072 Riverside East for tours at the end of March, and allow booked events to continue just through Dec. 31, The Windsor Star reports. Tours include a history lesson and whisky tasting.
“To see a company come in and say, ‘We’re going to close the brand centre, that history is not that important to us,’ that bothers me,” Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens told the paper last week. “Everyone here knows how important that history is to our community.”
"It’s unconscionable to me how you could continue to develop a brand by giving up on the home where it was founded,” Dilkens said
Dilkens met Monday in Chicago with executives of Beam Suntory and hopes the historical building, built in 1894, could remain open to the public.
“We’re working through some of the high-level issues that exist,” Dilkens said. “But my goal is to try to find a solution to make sure that portion of our history and that story and that brand can still exist in the City of Windsor.”
The company issued a statement:
“Canadian Club will still continue to be produced at the Windsor distillery, offering the same high quality whisky we’ve been making for more than 150 years. We assure you that our commitment to the Windsor community is just as strong as ever — we are just refocusing our investments to better cultivate the brand both locally and around the world.”
The company on its website describes the tour this way:
Our award-winning tour takes you back in time to the height of the company’s success and our founder’s personal friendships with some of the biggest innovators in history–Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. Visit the basement’s Speakeasy Room or the artifact-filled Archive Room where meetings were once held with Al Capone and The Purple Gang. Hear the story of how Canadian Club® Whisky quenched the thirst of American’s during the 13 long years of Prohibition. The tour finishes with a formal whisky tasting, guiding you through the tasting notes and flavours of various Canadian Club® whiskies.
The tour is $12 and $10 for people 55 and over.
