Tasting notes

nose

orchard fruit, orange peel, melon, beeswax and flowers

palate

vanilla custard and apple blossom, fresh pear, crushed mint, raisin, dates and honeyed fig

finish

stewed fruit and pear with vanilla cream, settling into rich malt and toffee

Mash bill

100% malted barley. Westward's barley wash is fermented slowly at low temperature with ale yeast, then double distilled. Two years in oloroso casks build toasted, nutty, autumnal notes on top of that malt.

Why it's craft

Westward gave this malt two full years in oloroso casks from a family sherry house in its fourth generation, a longer secondary maturation than sherry finishes usually get. The whiskey itself is brewed as an ale, double distilled and aged in new American oak in Portland before it goes into the sherry casks.