Stauning Smoke
Stauning was founded in 2005 by nine friends who wanted to make exceptinoal whisky in Denmark, specically usng local grains like rye and barley and using small copper pot stills (currently 24 of them). 100% of the grain is floor-malted at the distillery and no coloring or chill filtering is used. While the distillery has two decades of experience now, and a variety of core offerings to showcase, their global footprint has only expanded in recent years through additional funding from spirits conglomerate Diageo. Their only single malt is the Stauning Smoke, sourced from two Danish farms and lightly peated. The barley is kiln dried using local peat and heather and is meant to evoke a West Coast Danish terroir; matured in first-fill bourbon barrels, first-fill fortified wine and spirits casks, and heavy charred new American white oak barrels.
Balcones Rumble
Balcones was founded in 2008 in Waco, Texas. The beginning was bringing the different elements together until they could begin distilling in 2009. Two tenets of the distillery from the beginning has been to use ingredients that spoke to the heart of Texas and the other was to be boldly creative. Whether using Baby Blue corn or a remarkable single malt, they have looked to forge their own path of American whiskies. The Balcones Rumble is so creative as to be almost in another category of offerings altogether. It is, in fact, not a whiskey at all. So why are we reviewing it? Because when it was first poured out for us, we couldn’t tell it wasn’t a whiskey at first blush. So call it whiskey adjacent? Good enough for us to explore further. The Rumble is a Texas wildflower honey, turbinado sugar and fig spirit aged in small oak barrels for an undisclosed amount of time.
Swift Single Malt
Swift is a small single malt-focused distillery founded in 2012 by Amanda and Nick Swift, both Texas natives. Having traveled the world to learn about the art, science and business of whiskey-making, the Swifts clearly took a page from the homelands of whiskies and import all their Two-Row barley from Scotland before making the wort with water purposefully mimicking those from Northern Ireland and the Speyside region of Scotland. Even the yeast is a single malt-specific variety from Speyside! After distilling in two copper pot stills from Portugal, they take the narrow cuts and put them into barrels from either Kentucky or Portugal. Being a true micro-distillery, almost all the work is done by Amanda and Nick themselves, bucket by bucket, drop by drop, barrel by barrel. Their flagship offering, the Swift Single Malt, is a mix of ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks. Their hard work appears to be paying off, however, as Swift bottles have expanded beyond Texas onto shelves across the country.