High Coast Sixty Three
Sweden is a northern country and High Coast Distillery is on the outskirts there too, situated in Sörviken at 63ºN. That latitude served as the inspiration of the High Coast Sixty Three, where every element of the whisky and its making that could be rounded to that number was. It is peated single malt whisky peated to 63ppm, matured in 198 63 liter casks for 63 months (5+years), aged at 63 decimeters – roughly 20 feet – below ground. The first batch of this limited edition was bottled at 63ºF. Heck, the price of the grain in the Swedish currency was 6.3 krona per kilogram. The batch size was a 6300 liter wort and the average fermentation time was 63 hours. Even the cooper who made the barrels was born in 1963.
Torabhaig Allt Gleann
Torabhaig opened in 2017 on the Isle of Skye, perhaps more famous for its first distillery, Talisker. Situated in a farmstead from the 19th century built using stone from a nearby Cnoc Castle, the building has been refurbished with copper stills, washbacks, and all the other needed equipment. Thinking forward, the distillery roof is removable so that when the time comes to upgrade the stills, they can be moved in and out with minimal disturbance of the historical building. The Torabhaig Allt Gleann is the distillery’s inaugural release, so named from the Allt Gleann, one of the burns near the distillery that provides the water along with the Allt Breacach. Made with Concerto malted barley, Pinnacle MG+ yeast, and peated to 16ppm.
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.