Tasting notes

nose

plum and red fruit over honeycomb, walnut and gingerbread, with raisin and a little char

palate

fruitcake, marzipan and cocoa, a flash of lemon and red berries, then a wisp of smoke

finish

long; spiced coffee and dark caramel with plum pudding and dried black fruit, drying to toasted oak and oolong tea

Mash bill

100% malted barley. The malt is grown and malted in the Midwest and shipped to Lovingston, where it is milled on a 1920s Boby mill and mashed with spring water from the Blue Ridge Mountains. The distillery uses no grain other than malted barley in any of its whiskies.

Awards

• Gold — Beverage Testing Institute 2024

Why it's craft

Port Cask Reserve finishes Virginia Distillery Co.'s single malt in two kinds of port cask: tawny port casks from Portugal and casks that held port-style wine made in Virginia. Before the finish the malt spends at least four years in first-fill bourbon barrels in the distillery's cask houses, where hot summers and cool winters push maturation faster than in Scotland. The distillery mills, mashes, ferments and double distills every batch itself on copper pot stills built in Scotland.