Featured at World Whisky Day 2019: FEW Spirits trades a lot on their location and story, but they have a right to. Housed in the home of the US temperance movement, owner Paul Hletko struggled to change the prohibition-era ordinances still on the town law books to be able to get his distillery running. Started in 2011, FEW makes their spirits grain-to-glass. The distillery has several offerings and the labels feature woodcut prints of wonders from the 1893 World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago. The distillery’s name shares initials with Francis Elizabeth Willard (1839–1898), founder of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which is headquartered in Evanston. The FEW Single Malt is not one of their current offerings but has been in the past, so can be still be found on shelves, with the idea it could be revived in the future.
Distillery: FEW Spirits
Region: Foreign
Age: NAS
Strength: 46.5%
Price: $69.99
Maturation: Rye and bourbon barrels
Barrel: Batch 15-53
Location: Evanston, IL
Nose: Hay, grain, toffee
Palate: Oak, spice
Finish: Spice, orange
Comments: We recommend using a non-glencairn glass to help integrate the elements in those nose. An older FEW website can be found here.
Adam – There is a nice muted, chewy quality I enjoy here. The FEW single malt is a young one, and definitely benefits from sitting in a tumbler over a glencairn glass for whatever reason. The palate isn’t meant to shock and awe you, but it holds up as a perfectly fine sipping whiskey and I’m sure would actually pretty well if you wanted to add a little extra punch to a cocktail. I hoped having the maturation in the distillery’s rye barrels would have added a bit more spice to the final product but it doesn’t seem to be the case, only showing through occasionally. I’d feel more comfortable recommending this malt if it were priced more competitively for what you were getting. You can charge that much, but only if you deliver. Thankfully, if unfortunately for us, the market seems to have corrected itself.
Jenny – It’s like late summer when things are dry and golden. The smell does kind of remind me of horse shit at first if it’s in a glencairn glass. Be careful.
Like drinking sunshine. It’s wholesome.
Michael – This reminds me of when I make smoothies, especially the spinach in the smoothie. Or it reminds me of cold-pressed coffee spiked with whisky, followed by that vegetal note on the nose I didn’t get in the palate. An Irish coffee quality.
Peter – At first it’s sort of watery, but then it hits you with a little heat and dissolves nicely. I’m liking this.
Caitlin – Like drinking sunshine. It’s wholesome.
Ben – Like you dropped your ice cream or hard candy into some hay at the fair and you decide you want to eat it anyway. Like if you could eat wet dog. Yet I don’t hate this enough to stop drinking it. It’s super interesting how much I don’t like this. It’s worth having a conversation over.
