Tasting notes

nose

cinnamon, allspice and clove over malt, orange and caramel, with a wisp of smoke and white pepper

palate

malt and stone fruit with orange and spice, turning to sweet peat smoke, leather and pipe tobacco

finish

medium; sweet smoke lingers over oak and white pepper

Mash bill

100% malted barley. The barley is grown on the Hillrock estate and malted on the farm, and the malt is smoked in house over peat imported from Speyside, Scotland, so a thread of peat smoke runs under the malt.

Awards

• Gold — San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2017
• Double Gold — SIP Awards 2018
• Double Gold — New York World Wine & Spirits Competition 2019

Why it's craft

Hillrock floor-malts its own estate-grown barley in a malt house on the property, the first new malthouse built at an American distillery since Prohibition, and smokes it there over Scottish peat. The malt is then distilled on a copper pot still, aged and hand-bottled on the same estate in Ancram, a process the distillery calls Field-to-Glass. Jeffrey Baker and Cathy Franklin founded Hillrock in 2011 with master distiller Dave Pickerell.