Peated Whisky—But Not From Scotland

Peat, that decomposed plant material that when dried and set afire in the kiln, lends smoky, ashy, medicinal, and other alluring flavors to malted barley, is first and foremost associated with Scotland. Even non-scotch whisky makers often get their peated malt from Scottish malting houses. But some distillers outside Scotland have tapped into peat closer to home and are often using different techniques to create their smoky whiskies. In the process, they’ve discovered that not all peat is the same.

Scottish expat Graeme Macaloney founded Vancouver Island-based Macaloney’s Island Distillery and began distilling there in 2016. When confronted with a deficit of nearby maltsters capable of peat-smoking barley, Macaloney took matters into his own hands. With the help of a family member, he built a smoker that can smoke two tons of barley at a time and produces a smoke density similar to that of Laphroaig (which he visited for inspiration prior to building his own smoker).

But Macaloney isn’t trying to copy Laphroaig—he uses Canadian barley and peat from Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, just across the border from Canada. “People get the misconception that if you have a peaty whisky in hand it’s going to be this big smoke bomb, no matter where you get it from,” he says. “But using that local flavor and grain gives our peated whisky its own special nuances—the Washington peat is balanced, and has burning heather and bonfire notes, not anything medicinal.” Macaloney’s peat smoker—which also first dries the malt—has enabled him to further pursue local peat in what he’s calling the Peat Project, a series of whiskies that delves even more intensely into Canadian terroir and will include a single malt peated with Vancouver Island peat.

Australia’s Great Southern Distilling Co. uses its own smoker as well, and its own technique to make a variety of peated single malts under its Limeburners label. “We’re not using our peat during the malting process, but instead putting it into a specially built oven and smoking the already malted grains with peat,” says founder and master distiller Cameron Syme. “We put peat in the bottom of our peat smoker and then use a gas burner to get it smoldering. We take the peat smoke out of the oven by capturing smoke that otherwise escapes through the edges of our custom hot smoker box and put it through bits of the malted grain, in what’s both a hot and cold peat-smoking process.”

Syme’s peat comes from Denmark, Australia— situated on the southwestern tip of the country—where he has an exclusive contract with a marine farmer in the area. That peat and the special processes at the distillery yield flavors quite different from, say, an Islay single malt, with flavors that are lightly floral and well-integrated into the smoke notes.

Westland Distillery in Washington State made headlines last year when it released an American single malt using local peat. Previously, the distillery had sourced peat from Scotland for its flagship Peated single malt, but it did away with that entirely by 2021 in favor of Solum, which is made with peat extracted from a bog located about two hours south of Seattle. Westland worked with Skagit Valley Malting to both procure the peat and then smoke the malt, in what were firsts for both companies. “One of the challenges we’re dealing with is that the knowledge of peating malts is not here traditionally,” says distillery manager Tyler Pedersen. “At first we didn’t know the burn rate of peat, so we pelletized it, but now we’re feeding it into the machine in a powder form and ramping up the phenolic content, and that’s giving us a truer sense of terroir, with peat flavors that are ever so slightly smoked and earthy and leathery.”

Peat and Heather in Denmark

A growing contingent of distillers is taking their locally sourced peat and melding it with homegrown traditions. Along the west coast of Denmark, Stauning Whisky’s Smoke is not just peated; it’s also smoked with heather, an evergreen shrub that’s native to peat bogs and historically used by Danes for fuel, bedding, and more. “Heather is more easygoing and sweet than peat, and given that it flowers, there’s a floral flavor to it as well,” says distillery co-founder Alex Munch. “After years of experimentation, we started mixing heather and peat together because we found that they create a more interesting smoky flavor in whisky than either on its own.” Stauning sources peat from a bog 30 minutes from the distillery and gets its heather from a major Danish supplier. The heather is placed into the kiln first, followed by heaps of loose peat, which chokes up the fire and creates a great deal of sweet smoke.

In Sweden, Mackmyra makes Svensk Rök single malt using peat from just 10 miles from the distillery. Here the peat is combined with juniper branches for a more herbal sort of smoke. Adding the juniper twigs to the fire is a shout-out to an old Swedish tradition of preserving meat or fish by smoking it with juniper or a similar wood. The resulting flavor is bonfire smoke, very woodsy, and reminiscent of a campfire. While Svensk Rök is the distillery’s most heavily peated offering, it also blends smaller amounts of peated malt into a few of its other whiskies for soft smoke notes.

Terroir Talk

In the U.S., Illinois-based Thornton Distilling Co.’s head distiller Ari Klafter completed a master’s degree in brewing and distilling at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he had a lightbulb moment about peat’s potential to showcase regionality. “One thing I remember so distinctly from my time there was when we started learning about peat and were able to look up different peat samples using gas chromatography,” Klafter says.

“Basically, you’d see how different regions pop up in very specific clusters, which told me that there are specific compounds from certain regions, and that’s when I started to get interested in peat as an expression of terroir and as a way to bring in new flavors that are incredibly region-specific.” Thornton’s peat is floral and grassy with a hint of fruitiness, which Klafter attributes to the longstanding abundance of local flora and prairie grass in the Midwest. The distillery’s first peated single malt is set to come out later this year.

Other distillers both in and out of Scotland have also tapped into the idea of peat being tied to terroir. While Bruichladdich maintains a specific distillery character in all of its peated single malts, and therefore doesn’t explore differentiation in peat, head distiller Adam Hannett acknowledges that great variations are possible. “Peat can be distinctive based on the depth it’s dug from and the mix of vegetation that originally created it,” he notes.

At Thomson Whisky in New Zealand, co-owner and master distiller Mat Thomson echoes this opinion. “Our South Island Peat single malt, which uses peat harvested from Southland, the South Island’s southernmost region, doesn’t have the full iodine characters of something like Islay peat,” he explains. “If you think of seaweed thrown onto the coast of Islay over millennia, giving those peatlands briny, smoky flavors, we’re not getting that— we’re inland, so the plant material is different, and our peat is gentle and soft.” Thomson has considered releasing a pair of whiskies, one made from Scottish peated malt and the other with New Zealand peated malt, to showcase how different the two such whiskies would be. While smaller international distilleries have yet to bring their peated whiskies to the U.S., there are a fair number of locally peated single malts available stateside, from both domestic and overseas distillers.

Try These Single Malts Made With Local Peat

Macaloney’s Siol Dugal Canadian Single Malt, 46%, $82

Bonfire smoke, cigar, dried apricot, white chocolate, pine, hazelnut, salt, and cloves

Mackmyra Intelligens AI:02 Swedish Single Malt, 46.1%, $70

Green pear, butterscotch, jalapeño, vanilla fudge, smoke, juniper, and oak spice

Maine Craft Distilling Fifty Stone American Single Malt, 45%, $45

Campfire, salt air, caramel, applesauce, vanilla, iodine, crème brûlée, lemon zest, and hazelnut

Stauning Smoke Danish Single Malt, 47%, $100

Dense smoke, ashy soot, smoked fish, toffee, blackberry, and cinnamon spice (90 points)

Westland Solum American Single Malt (2nd Edition), 50%, $150

Smoke, peat, sweet lemon, vanilla, pepper spice, honey, orange peel, and red berries (92 points)