Mackmyra Motörhead
An age-old marketing trend has been the use of celebrities to promote brands and it has exploded in the whisky industry over the past couple of years. Before the surge, however, Swedish distillery Mackmyra partnered with English rock band Motörhead to help celebrate the group’s 40th anniversary in 2015. The band actively worked with the distillery to choose the barrels and blends, all aged at least five years. Drummer Mikkey Dee said “We think it’s great fun to launch a whisky in collaboration with a Swedish, world-famous distillery, Mackmyra. The whisky is incredibly good, with full character and fully flavoured with a superb bourbon touch” Motörhead’s front man Lemmy Kilminster was even more succinct: “Life is less painful with Motörhead Whisky. I may consider having a sip now and then.”
Westland Peated
Westland Distillery opened in 2010, started by head distiller Matt Hoffman and Emerson Lamb. The core line of the distillery is made up of three single malts. This Westland Peated was first released in 2014 and is unusual because as experimental as American whiskey generally is, one element that’s almost never seen is peat. One of the more practical reasons for this is because peat is generally harvested from wetlands, and wetlands have been federally protected under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Thus, Westland imported peated barley from Scotland to add to their regular five-malt spirit to make this peated single malt. A fortunate loophole allowed them to recently start harvesting local Washington peat for future projects, but it will be a few more years before the results of that local element are released.
Kilkerran 12 Year
The Glengyle distillery is a story of what can happen to a name in the topsy-turvy history of scotch. The storied Springbank distillery of Campbeltown was founded by Archibald Mitchell, and his two sons took it on after him. The brothers had a falling out eventually. Brother John kept Springbank and William founded Glengyle distillery right down the road in 1872. Like many distilleries in Scotland and Campbeltown, it closed in the 1920s before being reopened after several attempts in 2000 by the great-great nephew of William Mitchell, Hedley Wright, operating under J&A Mitchell and Co, the current owner of Springbank, along with Scotland’s oldest independent bottler, William Cadenhead. The choice of the name Kilkerran comes from the Gaelic Ceann Loch Cille Chiarain, the name of an older settlement on which Campbeltown now stands. It is not called Glengyle, because that name is already in use by a brand of blended Highland scotches and the distillery wanted to avoid confusion. The distillery has released several “works in progress” offerings and only recently has introduced core aged statements, this Kilkerran 12 year and Kilerran 8 year.