Branch & Barrel Plumwood
Branch & Barrel Distilling was founded in 2015 by friends Ryan Morgan, Scott Freund and Tom Sielaff after years of aging new make whiskey with different woods. One of them was wood from a plum tree, and was perhaps the one that finally pushed them into getting the distillery off the ground for real. The base spirit is a bourbon mash with high barley but some of their offerings are not aged in virgin oak barrels and thus do not meet the regulatory requirements to call it bourbon. The Branch & Barrel Plumwood is matured entirely in plum wood barrels and made in very small batches.
Tamdhu 15 Year
Tamdhu distillery was founded in 1896 in the Speyside village of Knockando, Scotland. Much of the next century passed without note, including some periods of dormancy related to war and supply shut off, and it wasn’t until the 1970s that more investments were made to increase production output. It is the last distillery in Scotland to use a Saladin box in production. Currently able to produce 4.5 million liters a year, most of the Tamdhu spirit is used in blended scotches like The Famous Grouse and Cutty Sark. However, some single malts do escape. This Tamdhu 15 is, like all their single malts, completely matured in ex-sherry casks.
Copperworks Peated
Copperworks Distilling has eschewed the normal distillery commercial standard by having a limited product offering but achieving uniformity between batches. Rather, the distillery has leaned purposefully into crafting each release as a limited, distinct expression that allows them to explore the subtle nuances that differences of grains, yeasts and cask aging can provide, while still holding onto some house styles. The Copperworks Peated is their 34th release, and is made from eight casks of whiskey that were aged for a little over four years, with Washington barley smoked using Washington peat, a first for the distillery. Copperworks has since signaled it will distill peated whiskies on an annual basis.