Tasting notes

nose

roasted cacao and caramel, with raspberry and oatmeal cookie

palate

malty cereal and dark chocolate, then coffee, graham cracker and a little tobacco

finish

medium to full and dry, with fruit holding beside hazelnut and fading into chocolate truffle

Mash bill

85% two-row pale malt, 5% chocolate malt, 5% C120 crystal malt, 5% C45 crystal malt. The barley is grown and malted in Colorado's San Luis Valley, and each batch starts with about 1,200 pounds of the four malts crushed on a roller mill. Deerhammer calls this mash unusual and describes the whiskey it makes as carrying notes of coffee, chocolate and dark fruit.

Why it's craft

Deerhammer has mashed, fermented, double distilled and aged every drop of its whiskey in Buena Vista, Colorado, since Amy and Lenny Eckstein founded it in 2010, and this single malt is its flagship. The malt is grown and malted in the San Luis Valley, and the distillery makes about one barrel a day on squat-head copper pot stills. Its barrels are built from staves air-dried for 18 months and rest in a rackhouse at 8,000 feet. The company remains independent, with no outside investors.