Crystal Head Vodka No Longer Banned by LCBO

Published on: 2011/10/07 - in News

Crystal Head Vodka now available in OntarioJust in time for Halloween, Dan Aykroyd’s Crystal Head vodka is finally available for purchase in Ontario liquor stores.

Launched in 2008, the premium vodka was had been banned by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario due to its skull shaped bottle being “in bad taste”.

The official Ontario launch will take place in Toronto-North York next week where Dan Aykroyd will be on scene to meet fans and sign bottles of CHV.

However a limited number of bottles were previously distributed to stores across Ontario as recent as last weekend.

According to local LCBO staff, 70 bottles were distributed across the province with only six “26ers” (750 ml) of CHV arriving in Kingston.  An inquiry during the early afternoon of Saturday October 1 revealed only two bottles remained at Kingston’s downtown store and those were snatched up very soon after wards.  There was no indication when regular shipments will be made to local LCBO outlets, although presumably shelves will be stocked soon after the official launch.

UPDATE: Bottles of Crystal Head Vodka are now on shelves in Kingston and around Ontario. Visit LCBO’s CHV page to determine availability and in-store stock.

The launch is to be held on Thursday, October 13 between 4pm and 6pm in LCBO store #1 at 2625D Weston Road in Toronto-North York. No schedule has been posted on the official Crystal Head Vodka website for bottle signing appearances by Dan Aykroyd, but hopefully a Kingston date will be forthcoming.

Kingston Connection

In addition to Dan Aykroyd have a family home just outside Kingston, there appears to be another connection between the city and Crystal Head Vodka…

The bottles purchased from the LCBO this past weekend all feature a sticker for “Globefill Inc” with Alfred Street in Kingston listed as its address. A larger bottle – “smuggled” into the province at an earlier date during the LCBO ban – also features the same sticker.

Until last May, the official Crystal Head vodka website was registered with that Alfred Street address as well, although it has since been changed to the Toronto address of “Wine Classics”. Globefill Inc has also been associated with Diamond Estates Wines and Spirits, which the actor has partnered with and distributes Dan Aykroyd branded wines.

As stated on the CHV website, 13 crystal heads  – dated between 5,000 and 35,000 years old – have been found in regions around the world, from the American southwest to Tibet. According to Hewlett Packard engineers, they bear no tool marks to indicate how they were made, but it is guessed that the skulls were polished into shape from solid quartz chunks over a period of several hundred years.

Crystal Head vodka has received many awards over the years, most recently in April where it went head-to-head in the 2011 Vodka Trials double blind taste test between both premium grain vodkas and vodkas costing as little as $10 a bottle.  CVH came out as the clear winner in that competition and was voted #1 by the majority of tasters.

And in March, Crystal Head Vodka was one of only a handful of brands to be awarded a Double Gold medal at the prestigious San Francisco World Spirits Competition where more than 200 vodkas were entered.

Video: Dan Aykroyd discusses the history of the Crystal Heads as well as of Crystal Head Vodka and its process

 


Photo: Tina Hsu