Westward Pinot Noir Cask
Westward Distillery was one of the early American handful single malt distillers. For over 25 years, Westward has continued to explore their craft on the West Coast as the American Single Malt landscape grew and took shape. The Westward Pinot Noir Cask has been a staple of the distillery’s core line for a number of years. Beginning with the distillery’s signature single malt, the liquid is then finished in French oak casks that formerly held Pinot Noir wines from Oregon’s Willamette Valley for two years.
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.
Teeling Brabazon Series 2
While Teeling Distillery was founded in 2015, a quick look at their offerings will show releases carrying much older age statements. This is because when John Teeling sold the Cooley Distillery to what is now Beam Suntory, one of the stipulations of the sale was the family taking 16,000 casks of whiskey with them. It is from these casks that many of their older bottlings are derived, whiskey essentially sourced from themselves. The Brabazon series from Teeling kicked off in 2017 and was named after William Brabazon, the 3rd Earl of Meath, who oversaw the development of the New Market area in Dublin that would eventually become the Liberties district where the current distillery resides. There have been four entries in this series as of this writing. The Brabazon 2 was bottled in September 2017 and matured in a various sizes of ex-port casks.