Foreign

Cedar Ridge The QuintEssential

Cedar Ridge Winery and Distilltery was founded in 2005 by Jeff Quint and family. They released their first bourbon in 2010 and have gradually expanded to include rum, gin and fruit brandy. Yet their main focus remains whiskey, as is evidenced from their almost dozen different offerings. The distillery’s first American single malt was released in 2020, the QuintEssential. Besides being a smart play on the family name, this single malt makes use of the other aspects of the business and involves a complex aging and finishing process involving 20 different types of casks, a solera system, and a mixture of peated and unpeated malt from Canada. While looking to Scotland for inspiration, Cedar Ridge also embraces the exploratory nature of craft distilling in America and future releases of the QuintEssential promise to continue pushing boundaries.

By Adam | November 30, 2021 | Foreign | No Comments |

The Spirit of Hven is a craft distillery located on the island of Ven, which lies in the Öresund strait between Denmark and Sweden. It is also a conference and hotel resort, replete with restaurant and pub. It is a remarkably small grain-to-glass distillery, which is why their releases are so often limited. The Spirit of Hven make a number of spirits but it is clear they are fans of single malt whisky. And astrology, as shown by their beaker-shaped bottles and copiously detailed product sheets. The Seven Stars is a series of single malts, each named after one of the stars in the Ursa Major (Latin for “Great Bear”) constellation, the third brightest modern constellation in the night sky. It is more familiarly known as the Big Dipper. One of the stars, Polaris, is also known as North Star. The fifth in the series is Alioth, which comes from the Arabic alyat al-hamal (“the sheep’s fat tail”), and is the brightest star in the constellation.

By Adam | November 20, 2021 | Foreign | No Comments |

Many an American single malt (and those the world over) take a variety of cues from scotch. Wanderback is tapping into a different tradition, one found in both Ireland and in the Bourbon world here in the United States, somewhere between a distillery and an independent bottler. This is where a brand works with a distillery to create the whisky, which is then handed over to the brand for anything else like maturation and blending. This isn’t because the company wants to shortcut the normal process, moreso that they want to explore all the prospects American whiskies currently produce already offer and take them in new directions. The first four batches, The Evergreen Collection, were distilled just a few hours to their north at Westland Distillery. The Wanderback Batch 3 has been aged in high toast, low char new American oak and finished in French oak port casks.

By Adam | October 30, 2021 | Foreign | No Comments |