A Venezuelan raised in Italy moves to San Francisco and starts making Canadian whisky. It should be the start of a joke, but for master distiller Andres Faustinelli, the punchline is Bearface, an innovative new entrant to the whisky world.
“Where I grew up, whisky was the foundation of the culture,” Faustinella told Average Janes. “People think of Venezuela as being about rum, but there’s a lot of whisky. I grew up drinking whisky, so I had a passion for whisky.”
That passion led him to Canada, where regulations on what counts as whisky are more relaxed than in the United States or Scotland.
“I saw that there were so many regulations around whisky, and Canada had this open space for innovation,” he explains. “It’s taking whisky taste ‘A’ and making it whisky taste ‘Z’ through a process that no one is using.”
While we’ve not fact-checked that claim, the process is one we’ve not heard of anybody else using, so we’ll let him have that for now.
The 100% corn grain Canadian whisky is matured in ex-bourbon barrels for at least seven years, where it picks up sweet vanilla flavours before being moved to French oak red wine casks that imbue the spirit with notes of tart fruits. The spirit spends three to six months in there, and is then split into three variants of air-dried virgin Hungarian oak barrels, each toasted to varying degrees to add oak tannins, spices and a bit of barbecue flavour.
The one neat trick to making great whisky? It involves ageing it in shipping containers in the Canadian wilderness. Called ‘Elemental Ageing,’ the process takes advantage of the region’s wild temperature swings — as much as 40 degrees in a single day — and amplifies them, forcing the whisky and wood to interact.
“The most important part of the process is in the Kelowna Valley in British Columbia,” explains Faustinelli. “It’s an hour’s flight from Vancouver, and where they have extremes of temperature you don’t get anywhere else. You can have in the day 40c and at night 8c. I overexpose the casks to temperature fluctuations by using shipping containers in the wild.
“My casks pop like champagne when I open them!”
When ready, the hand-selected casks are blended to create a bold and balanced whisky with long, complex flavours and a distinctive spice finish. However, given the difficulty in predicting Canadian weather, it’s more a blend of seasons than barrels.
“The idea came from a cooper,” adds Faustinelli. “I told them I had a problem with whisky that is very sweet, very fruity, and juicy. It needed more structure. It was this wine cooper who helped with that.
“We’ve gone from very old casks to seven-year-old ones and now ones that are virgin — it’s almost a bourbon upside down.”
The cold truth is that Faustinelli is in this business to make money, but there’s a sense that there’s more to it than that.
“I’ve done Tequila. I’ve done mezcal. Bearface is the first time I’m putting my name on a label,” he says. “I want to make a global brand that is less known that is creating a different conversation for whisky and is having fun in the process.”
I ask if he’s having fun with it. “A lot! I designed it for me, so it’s very fun! And it’s working now.”
It really is working. The plan was to grow slowly, moving into bars and events, but then Tesco did a blind tasting of 200 brands and decided to stock Bearface
.
“My idea initially was let’s go slow, and now it’s like, ‘Woah!’ It’s not expected.”
Tasted: Bearface Triple Oak Canadian Whisky
Ahead of opening a bottle of Bearface whisky, we tried samples from each of the three barrels before they were blended. The individual spirits would happily stand up against many competitors. What’s more apparent, though, is the obvious difference in flavour between the three despite being in the barrels for no more than two months.
Pouring a glass of the finished article, you’re hit by a pleasing nose of butter and vanilla, with a clear background of oak and spices. The cranberries and orange notes from the French wine barrels come through in the mouth, accompanied by honey, maple syrup, and even bacon flavours.
A sweet finish quickly switches to some spicy notes, with a chilli kick — always smooth and never harsh — almost forcing your hand into taking another sip.
Distilleries in Scotland will be horrified by the Bearface process, but the result is a whisky that really works, whether you’re taking it neat or using it as the base for an Old Fashioned. And, for the latter, it works exceptionally well.
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