Woodinville Straight Bourbon is a Washington State straight bourbon that is pot distilled by Woodinville Whiskey Company in Woodinville, Washington state. The distillery, established in 2010, was acquired in 2017 by Moët Hennessy (LVMH), which might explain why it’s now popping up on store shelves. All of the grain for distillation comes locally, from…
The distillery uses local New York grains milled using their on-site hammer mill. The mash for the Wheated Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon – 70% local corn, 20% red winter wheat, 10% malted barley – is double-distilled using a Vendome continuous still and copper thumper (basically a secondary spirit still), although the company also has a…
The website for Ezra Brooks is littered with marketing gush that proclaims how “honest” and “straight-shooting” the products are, which is a laugh because there is no Ezra Brooks distillery – the brand’s bourbons are distilled by parent company Luxco’s Lux Row distillery, which also makes Rebel Yell, David Nicholson, and others. The ryes are sourced from Indiana, which means…
In fact, Henry McKenna is made from the same mashbill (75% corn, 13% rye, 12% barley) as Elijah Craig and Evan Williams. Bottles can be found for $15 or less, and even 1-liter bottles are available in some markets for about the same. That’s some inexpensive whiskey, even though it’s definitely younger and lower ABV (40%) than its cousin brands.
Like Elijah Craig and Henry McKenna, Evan Williams has a mash bill of 75% Corn, 13% Rye, and 12% Barley. It’s also Kentucky straight bourbon, but because it’s labeled “bottled in bond” it’s aged for at least 4 years and bottled at 50% ABV (100 proof). It can be found in bottle sizes of 750ml, 1 liter, and 1.75 liter, all for very reasonable prices.
The label on this squat bottle of bourbon looks like it was created before anyone in the market started caring about the contents of their bottles. It informs me that the liquid is from a single barrel, without giving a bottle number, barrel identifier, date, year, or even batch number. It also reveals that it is bottled at the very random 44.45% ABV and that it was distilled by Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. Aaaaaand… that’s it.
We know from other sources that Westland is experimenting with local Pacific Northwest (USA) peat, but that the core range Peated expression uses already-peated malt imported from the Eastern Highlands of Scotland. That peated malt is distilled (together or separately, I can’t tell) along with Westland’s standard “5-malt” blend of Washington Select Pale Malt, Munich Malt…
This is just Beam straight rye (likely at 4 years and a day old) at 45% ABV. Maybe – MAYBE – if they had anything whatsoever to say about what their “oldest recipe” entails, or why it has anything to do with pre-Prohibition distillation, or really any information at all about why this is different from the 40% ABV version that this is replacing, I MIGHT have been a little less cynical…
Westland’s meticulously-sourced sherry casks are shipped whole (rather than broken down into staves and re-coopered, which is how most whisky producers handle them) to the States and then filled with the same five-malt blend as the American Oak release. The distillery uses both ex-Oloroso and ex-PX sherry casks, and blends the resulting full-term sherry-matured malt whiskey with…
Westland does a few things differently, and the results are right in the glass. First, it’s not just “malted barley” like 99% of single-malt scotch. Westland uses a blend of 5 different barley malts: Washington Select Pale Malt, Munich Malt, Extra Special Malt, Pale Chocolate Malt, and…