Tasting notes

nose

charred orange zest and smouldering driftwood over ripe pear and honeyed toast, with saddle leather and a soft, earthy peat smoke

palate

oily and mouth-coating; vanilla sponge, nougat, brown sugar and cocoa meet savory smoked bacon, toasted pecan, cedar and damp earth, with a briny, seaweed-like edge

finish

long and gently warming; toasted hazelnut, orange peel and barbecue bark linger, then dry toward peppery menthol, lemon zest, leather and a last wisp of peat smoke

Mash bill

100% malted barley. The barley is malted over smoke from peat harvested near Shelton, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula, which lends an earthy smoke with campfire, brine and hickory accents and a milder profile than traditional peated whiskey. Copperworks brews the malt into an unhopped beer before it goes to the stills, the method its brewer founders built the distillery around.

Awards

• Silver — Beverage Testing Institute 2024

Why it's craft

Peatsmith takes its smoke from peat dug in Washington, near Shelton on the Olympic Peninsula, so the smoke reads earthy and campfire-like and leaves room for the fruit and grain underneath. Copperworks opened on the Seattle waterfront in 2013, founded by brewers Jason Parker and Micah Nutt, and it brews its own unhopped beer and runs it through copper pot stills built for it in Scotland. The distillery remains independently owned, with co-owners Jason Parker and Jeff Kanof at the helm.