Tasting notes

nose

saddle leather and sweet tobacco with raisin, black cherry and caramel, then hazelnut butter and bergamot under cold campfire smoke

palate

bright and piquant, with raspberry jam, raisin and brown sugar, then chicory, bitter chocolate, toasted oak and peat

finish

the peat swells as the fruit fades, with tobacco, leather and light spice turning savory and drying to sawdust and wood smoke

Mash bill

100% peated malted barley from Scotland. The smoke comes from the malt itself, kilned over peat before it is shipped to Oregon, and it is the same grain McCarthy's uses across its single malts. Here that smoke sits under a layer of sherry fruit rather than leading.

Why it's craft

Clear Creek founder Steve McCarthy set out to make a peated single malt in Oregon after a trip to Ireland, and the brand calls itself the first American single malt. This bottling takes the six-year whiskey, aged in barrels made from Oregon oak, and finishes it in Pedro Ximénez sherry casks before bottling at full cask strength. Clear Creek began in Portland in 1985 as a fruit-brandy distillery and is now owned by Hood River Distillers.