Liberty Pole Peated Bourbon
Mingo Creek Craft Distillers was founded in 2017 by Jim and Ellen Hough. The name of their distillery and their whiskey, Liberty Pole, references the Whiskey Rebellion (1791-1794) that has its roots in Western Pennsylvania, where the Liberty Pole was raised by farmers to proclaim their resistance to the whiskey tax levied against them by a fledgling federal government. The rebellion collapsed after federal militia arrived but memory of it still lives in Washington, PA. The distillery offers six core whiskies, including a bourbon cream, and have recently upgraded their still size to increase production. In 2019, they worked with all the other Pennsylvania distilleries to create a special cask strength rye containing whiskey from each distillery for the Whiskey Rebellion Festival. The Liberty Pole Peated Bourbon is double pot distilled and aged 13-18 months.
Balvenie 15 Year Single Barrel Sherry Cask
This Balvenie 15 year is aged entirely in an ex-Oloroso sherry butt. A butt is a type of cask standard for aging sherry, approximately 475-500 liters. Because of the larger size, there is less surface area per amount of liquid and thus the cask impact is lessened. This may be why this particular offering spends its entire life in the same sherry butt, as opposed to other releases where the sherry cask is used only at the end. Unlike other age statement single malts, which contain a variety of ages with only the youngest listed, this Balvenie is 15 years only, no younger or no older.
Deanston 12 Year
Deanston has been a distillery since 1966, though the site was a major cotton mill for almost 200 hundred years before that. Sourcing water from the River Teith, it is the only current distillery in Scotland to be entirely powered by hydro-electricity. Deanston is currently owned by Distell Group Limited, which also owns the Tobermory and Bunnahabhain distilleries. Its first single malt was named Old Bannockburn but the core range is now made up of the Deanston 12 and a No Age Statement offering, though they experiment with more limited or distillery-only editions.