Single malt

Connemara

One could be forgiven if you think this Irish whiskey is masquerading as a Scottish whisky. Only twice distilled, unlike the usual triple distillation of Irish malts, with the barley peated, Connemara is a relatively new whiskey that seems to hearken back to an Islay more than anything. It has done well, winning nearly a dozen competitive awards over the past decade. When the Irish whiskey industry was in full flower a century and more ago, though, there were some that incorporated peat smoked barley (the Scots never had the market cornered on using peat for a fuel source, after all) and it is not horribly unusual to find an Irish whiskey double distilled today, even if it is not the norm. Still, this Connemara expression out of Kilbeggan Distillery, which is owned by the Cooley Distillery, bears the imprint of John Teeling before he sold Cooley to Beam Suntory in 2014. There are cask strength and 12 year offerings available in the United States and other expressions elsewhere in the world.

By Adam | March 17, 2018 | Foreign | No Comments |

Westland Distillery is one of the new distilleries popping up throughout the U.S. over the last decade or so, drawing to mind the rise of craft brewing in the preceding decades. Taking a cue from the beer and coffee cultures of the Pacific Northwest, Westland uses five different malts (Washington pale ale malt, Munich malt, extra special malt, pale chocolate malt and a brown malt) along with Belgian brewer’s yeast. They are very clear in that they are trying to make a whiskey true to the region from which they come, including moving towards sourcing all their ingredients locally in the near future. These are very new whiskies, only being on the market since 2013, so we’ll be very interested to follow Westland’s growth.

By Adam | August 6, 2015 | Foreign | 1 Comment |