Tasting notes

nose

red berries, leather and tobacco with plum, chestnut, gingerbread and a briny edge of peat smoke

palate

dense; walnut and date cake, raisin and browned butter, candied lemon peel, then clove, allspice and black pepper with a seaweed note

finish

long; dark chocolate, cherry cola and tobacco, with clove and cracked peppercorn giving way to mint, thyme and a last thread of smoke

Mash bill

100% malted barley. The barley is grown and malted in the Midwest and milled on the distillery's 1920s Boby mill in Lovingston. The smoke in this bottling comes from casks that previously held Islay whisky, used in the maturation, rather than from the house malt.

Why it's craft

First Cut was assembled to drink with a cigar: seven-year-old Virginia single malt drawn from Spanish oak, sherry, port, STR, Château Palmer Cabernet, Armagnac, Cognac and fino casks, plus Islay casks for a touch of smoke. Virginia Distillery Co. distilled all of it on its own copper pot stills in Lovingston and bottled it at 108 proof.