Westland Releases Solum 2, The Second Edition of Its Single Malt Made with American Peat
February 1, 2024 –––––– Julia Higgins
American peat bogs exist, but few American distillers tap them for their peated whiskeys. Instead, most import peat or peated barley from Scotland. That’s why it was so notable when Westland announced the arrival of Solum, a peated American single malt made with peat extracted from a bog located just two hours south of Seattle, in March of last year.
Pacific Northwest peat is nothing like its Scottish counterpart. It’s more herbal and earthy, with a distinctive Labrador Tea note that lends a completely different flavor profile. Solum is currently a gentler expression of peat as well, though that’s not exactly by design. “One of our challenges is that peating [malt] has not been here traditionally, and our malt house partner [Skagit Valley Malting] hadn’t smoked [malt] before,” explains distillery manager Tyler Pedersen. That meant the years leading up to the first release of Solum involved a lot of trial and error; the first year Skagit Valley started peating malt for Westland, the phenolic content of the malt was just 5 parts per million (ppm), while these days it’s up to 18 ppm. Like Edition 1, Solum Edition 2 uses a combination of those peated malts.
Aside from its locally sourced peat, the whiskey is also made entirely with Washington barley—turning it up a notch from the first edition, which included just over 90% of barley from the state. Solum continues to be aged in a combination of new and used oak, with this one maturing in a total of 20 casks: 43% bourbon barrels for 4 years; 24% Cooper’s Reserve new oak for 6 years; 19% Cooper’s Reserve new oak for 4 years; and 14% Cooper’s Select new oak for 4 years. (Cooper’s Select and Cooper’s Reserve barrels are both from ISC cooperage; the Select barrels are air-seasoned for 18 months, and the Reserve barrels see 24 months of air seasoning.) While 4,044 bottles of Solum Edition 1 were released, this year there’s a bit more this time around, with 5,212 bottles available worldwide for $150.
