Tasting notes

nose

peat smoke first, then orange peel and lemon, ripe plum, vanilla bean and a meaty char with a trace of chimney soot

palate

creamy and full; butterscotch, vanilla and red apple skin, baked plum, a sprig of rosemary and a little briny seaweed, settling into rounded peat

finish

long and buttery; lemon oil and a faint petrol edge up front, then char and peat smoke hold on and slowly thin, leaving a lingering honey sweetness

Mash bill

100% peated malted barley. The barley is malted and peat-smoked in Scotland and shipped to San Jose; the distillery does not grow it. The peat in the malt is the source of all the whisky's smoke, since the barrels are ex-bourbon oak rather than smoked or peated casks.

Why it's craft

This bottle is distilled in San Jose from peated barley imported from Scotland and matured in first-fill bourbon barrels, a California take on smoky single malt. 10th Street was founded in 2017 by engineers and college friends Virag Saksena and Vishal Gauri, and it distills its single malts itself on copper pot stills. It was among the first spirits producers to open in San Jose since Prohibition.