Cleveland Underground Sugar Maple
Back in 2009, navy veteran Tom Lix started experimenting with whiskey. But not in the traditional sense. Cleveland Whiskey seeks to push the envelope about what is possible with whiskey, from how it is produced and aged to the regular taste profiles generally expected in the industry. The Underground series is the distilleries main line, each offering ages in traditional barrels for about six months before going through a proprietary process involving pressure extractions and differing wood combinations using more exotic woods rarely seen as finishing elements. The Cleveland Underground Super Maple is a bourbon finished with sugar maple wood using this transformative method.
Cedar Ridge The QuintEssential
Cedar Ridge Winery and Distilltery was founded in 2005 by Jeff Quint and family. They released their first bourbon in 2010 and have gradually expanded to include rum, gin and fruit brandy. Yet their main focus remains whiskey, as is evidenced from their almost dozen different offerings. The distillery’s first American single malt was released in 2020, the QuintEssential. Besides being a smart play on the family name, this single malt makes use of the other aspects of the business and involves a complex aging and finishing process involving 20 different types of casks, a solera system, and a mixture of peated and unpeated malt from Canada. While looking to Scotland for inspiration, Cedar Ridge also embraces the exploratory nature of craft distilling in America and future releases of the QuintEssential promise to continue pushing boundaries.
Spirit of Hven Seven Stars No. 5 Alioth
The Spirit of Hven is a craft distillery located on the island of Ven, which lies in the Öresund strait between Denmark and Sweden. It is also a conference and hotel resort, replete with restaurant and pub. It is a remarkably small grain-to-glass distillery, which is why their releases are so often limited. The Spirit of Hven make a number of spirits but it is clear they are fans of single malt whisky. And astrology, as shown by their beaker-shaped bottles and copiously detailed product sheets. The Seven Stars is a series of single malts, each named after one of the stars in the Ursa Major (Latin for “Great Bear”) constellation, the third brightest modern constellation in the night sky. It is more familiarly known as the Big Dipper. One of the stars, Polaris, is also known as North Star. The fifth in the series is Alioth, which comes from the Arabic alyat al-hamal (“the sheep’s fat tail”), and is the brightest star in the constellation.