Portland, Oregon’s Westward Whiskey head distiller and blender Miles Munroe’s background in brewing has influenced his creation of American single malts.
With One Recipe But Many Styles American Single Malt Is In The Spotlight
November 27, 2023 –––––– Julia Higgins
Since 2012, Westland Distillery has plied its trade in Seattle’s SoDo neighborhood, named for its south of downtown location. It’s a former industrial part of town filled with warehouses and factories that have gradually given way to a new generation of distillers, brewers, restaurants, and retailers. Westland’s trendy urban feel stands in stark contrast to its whiskey creations, which lean toward a far different landscape—north in the Skagit Valley, where damp, spongy peat bogs proliferate and fields of tulips, cabbage, potatoes, and barley grow, then west to Washington’s forests of garryana oak. These are the places where you’ll find Westland’s inspiration for its whiskeys, which are part of a burgeoning style called American single malt.
But Westland’s whiskeys represent just one of many interpretations of the genre, as distillers around the country put their own stamp on this rapidly emerging style. The core unifying factor, of course, is a mashbill of 100% malted barley, the roots of which can be traced to single malt scotch. But American distillers have taken Scotland’s influence and created something entirely new.
“Initially we were very informed by Scotland— our engineer and mentor Harry Cockburn had also been the engineer at Bowmore, and had spent decades in the industry,” says Amanda Beckwith, lead blender at Virginia Distillery Co. in Lovingston, which opened its doors in 2011 and makes only single malt. “He designed the layout of our distillery so you can blink and pretend you’re in Scotland. But things took a distinctly American turn.”
Under the freewheeling American guidelines, a single malt whiskey can go into any cask type, although bourbon casks are still the mainstay.
That turn is best exemplified by the distillery’s choice of casks. Scotland allows whisky to be matured or finished in new oak casks or those that were previously used for wine, beer, or spirits. Under the more freewheeling American guidelines, a single malt can go into any cask type for maturation. While bourbon barrels are still its mainstay, Virginia Distillery Co. also uses casks that previously held roasted coffee beans, cold brew, cider, and other beverages. “One of the reasons I fell in love with used casks is that all the beautiful fermentation esters in our whiskey get to shine,” explains Beckwith. “If you visit our distillery and walk by our fermentation tanks, there are aromas of green apple skin, pear, banana nut bread, apricot— and those notes are somewhere in every whiskey we make.”
Beckwith also points to Virginia’s water, whose softness is closer to that of the Czech Republic than Scotland—and to Virginia’s humidity, which causes more water vapor to interact with the whiskey, something Beckwith counters by filling barrels to 62.4% ABV, just shy of the legal maximum.
In Iowa, the Corn State, making whiskey from 100% barley isn’t a natural progression, but Cedar Ridge Winery & Distillery took up the challenge, with father-and-son distiller/ owners Jeff and Murphy Quint choosing to focus on cask-finished single malts. “We look to our own historical roots in wine and use them to influence our single malts,” says head distiller Murphy. He puts whiskey in their winery’s red wine and white wine barrels, as well as sherry butts, port pipes, and rum casks. He then marries those whiskeys in the distillery’s solera vat, which now contains around 20 different finishing casks. That system ultimately creates Cedar Ridge’s single malt, QuintEssential.
The other key route to the creation of American single malt besides Scotland is craft beer. In Oregon, Portland’s Westward Whiskey has been making single malt since 2004. Head distiller Miles Munroe began his career as a brewer—an excellent place to start because of beer’s focus on fermentation—and it informs his work to this day. “As ex-brewers, we know how to coax out really delicious esters from yeasts,” says Munroe. “We’ve put a lot of hard work into our fermentation and have been very picky about our grains, so it doesn’t make sense to then dump that new make into a heavily charred, big oak barrel and cover it all up. [Careful fermentation] is our way of preserving the terroir element in our whiskeys.” Westward’s core expressions are made from Sierra Nevada yeast and two-row barley from the Pacific Northwest.
Lance Winters, head distiller at St. George Spirits in California, is another former brewer whose path led him to American single malt. “As a brewer, I recognized that there were a lot of aromas and flavors that are created through the malting process, and I wanted to see if they could lend themselves to a whiskey the way that they did to a beer,” says Winters. His hypothesis proved correct, and he’s now been making single malts since 2000 that are brimming with chocolate, roasted nut, and coffee character.
Expressions of the Land
Westland, meanwhile, has placed a determined focus on Northwestern terroir. The core Westland single malt label is now sourcing 90% of its barley from Washington state, and its three additional core whiskeys are all about the region as well. Garryana, first released in 2016, explores the influence of native oak on flavor. Colere, launched in 2021, leans into forgotten barley varietals, eschewing what distillery manager Tyler Pederson calls “the commodity grain system.” Solum, introduced earlier this year, is something of a terroir crown jewel for Westland—it uses Washington-sourced peat, making it one of the first truly American peated single malts (there are but a few others who use American peat in their whiskey). Pederson notes that Solum’s peat is different from that found on Islay, with less sphagnum moss and greater elements of botanicals and herbs; he compares it to Labrador tea. “It gives us a more leathery, earthy flavor profile, not so intensely medicinal or iodine in taste,” he says. Tying it all together is a Belgian saison brewer’s yeast (the SafAle 258 strain), which draws from Washington’s brewing culture and brings out top-notch esters and phenol characters.
In the American Southwest, a different set of influences is giving American single malt another unusual stamp, and creating some of the best expressions of the style. Walk through any town in the southwest on a winter’s night and a curious, smoky smell might greet you. It’s sweet and slightly nutty, but also earthy and pungent— it’s the scent of mesquite burning in fireplaces. One distiller using mesquite-smoked malt in his whiskeys is Colin Keegan, master distiller and founder of New Mexico-based Santa Fe Spirits and its Colkegan single malts.
“We wanted everything to tie back to the region, and mesquite smoking was a natural answer,” says Keegan. All of its single malts, except for the recently released Unsmoked, are mesquite-smoked. Keegan also notes that Santa Fe’s 7,000-foot elevation and low humidity are factors in creating drier, spicier, desert-style whiskeys. All of it evokes the Southwest in the glass.
Over in neighboring Arizona, Whiskey Del Bac has been making Dorado, a mesquite-smoked single malt, since 2011. Like Keegan, Del Bac founder Stephen Paul wanted his whiskeys to tell a story about the desert, and he landed on “mesquited” single malts, making use of velvet mesquite—a variant dominant in southern Arizona that is particularly fragrant when burned. For Dorado, the mesquite melds flavors of tobacco, campfire embers, toffee, and plenty of milk and dark chocolate. The smoke is unlike what you’d get from Islay, or even Colkegan from the state next door. Del Bac makes a variety of single malt expressions—cask strength, barrel finished, and others—but its common thread is chocolate.
In central Texas, Balcones Distilling is making southwestern single malts in a style all its own, in addition to bourbon, rye, and corn whiskey. Master distiller Jared Himstedt has experimented with various barley varietals for the past six years, discerning which grow best in the Texas heat, and he also pays close attention to what that climate does during fermentation. “We’ve made Texas a partner in our process; we’re in a very specific location, and fermentations are going to go differently with wild yeast and bacteria,” he says. “We do longer, more acidic fermentations that end up with a decent amount of fruit character, ranging from apples and pears to apricot, peach, and berries. The Texas climate brings a density to distilling, almost as if you made a reduction while cooking—there’s a lot of flavor and activity going on in a small package, and figuring out how to dance with that when the whiskey is in barrel is fun. We’re constantly learning.”
Enter the Giants
Until recently, American single malt was a place for small craft distillers, but some of whiskey’s biggest players are now entering the arena. Jack Daniel Distillery went first, releasing its first-ever single malt last fall, a limited edition sherry cask-finished expression. As we went to press in September, Jack Daniel was poised to launch a permanent edition, also finished in oloroso sherry casks, which will be released in Travel Retail later this year.
More recently came the arrival of James B. Beam Distilling Co.’s Clermont Steep from master distiller Freddie Noe, which debuted earlier this year. Clermont is made from Midwestern barley—Noe looked into Kentucky grains, but barley is a tough crop to grow in the Bluegrass State. He used Beam family jug yeast in fermentation, the same yeast that goes into all Beam products. After being distilled on a column, Clermont Steep was aged 5 years in barrels that were toasted and then charred to level 1, contributing flavors of rich butterscotch and shaved oak.
“What I like about this whiskey, and what’s more important than anything, is its ability to change people’s perceptions of what American whiskey is about,” he says. “We talk a lot about bourbon, but I wanted to throw everything out the window and come to this project with a blank slate.”
While American single malt may lack the provenance of bourbon or rye, it has developed a remarkable culture during its brief period of existence.
In technical terms, American single malt whiskey must be made entirely at one U.S. distillery, and mashed, distilled, and aged in the U.S. from a fermented mash of 100% malted barley. It also must be stored in oak barrels no larger than 700 liters, and may not contain neutral spirits. Other additives like coloring and flavoring are admissible, and finally, as with all other American whiskeys, American single malts must be bottled at no less than 40% ABV. Those are the guidelines set forth in 2016 by the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission, a trade group that represents over 200 single malt makers, and at press time, those guidelines are still awaiting government codification. Noe remains a proponent of using American virgin white oak. “American whiskey as a whole has built its backbone on new casks,” he says. “That’s a big one for us, and all of our single malts will likely continue to be aged in new casks [as are our other whiskeys],” he says.
In Colorado, single malt maker Stranahan’s is among the elder statesmen of American single malt, founded in 2004 by Jess Graber and the late George Stranahan, both of whom were rooted in the craft brewing world. Stranahan’s has similarly long emphasized new white oak as its signature in homage to this history, and is as attached to it as Beam. “Every single barrel that we do starts as virgin American oak, and it’s one of the things that’s uniquely American,” says head blender Justin Aden. “It adds so much more Americana to our whiskeys, and differentiates them from most single malts abroad.”
While those rules may appear strict, they’re designed to leave plenty of room for creativity. “We wanted to ensure we’re giving whiskey drinkers what they want and expect, while also making sure we’re giving ourselves the freedom to make the whiskeys we want to make, the way we want to make them,” says Chicago’s FEW Spirits founder and distiller Paul Hletko. As one of the group’s founding members, Hletko has championed American single malts for years.
In a similar vein, American Single Malt Whiskey Commission president Steve Hawley wants these whiskeys competing on the global stage—stricter guidelines would hamper that. “What we want to do with this definition is give American single malt some teeth, but leave room open for creativity and innovation within that; to stand there and restrict distillers to one type of oak is counter to that idea,” he says. “The last thing we want is for consumers all over the world to dismiss this style from America because they think a new oak requirement is misguided…which, of course, it is.”
While American single malt may lack the provenance of bourbon or rye, it has developed a remarkable culture in its current period of existence. Rich potential seeps from the style, as its makers roar ahead into uncharted territory and create a force to be reckoned with on the global stage. It’s thoroughly American: there’s self-expression, rewards in risk-taking, and an undeniable sense of freedom.
