American Single Malts: Westland Distillery

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of American single malt interviews exploring new twists on an old formula, and to start, we're journeying to Seattle to talk with Westland Distillery's Matt Hofmann — one of the most outspoken proponents of the American single malt as a groundbreaking flavor profile.

Westland Distillery lab — Westland lab photo courtesy Westland

"Age before beauty" is bad advice and worse courtesy, especially when you are the one getting to go before. But whiskey tasters tend to follow it nonetheless: we like old bottles, we like older distilleries. Tell a group of reviewers you have a twenty-year-old bottle of scotch and a lovely five-year-old bourbon and they lift their Glencairn glasses for the elder alcohol before you can say "Glenlivet." We can't help it. And it's a shame, because to be born a single malt in America this last decade is to win the whiskey lottery.

The average barfly at your favorite steakhouse might breathlessly tell you that America has no good single malts: this bad reputation comes from deviations from the accepted recipe of single-origin, pot-stilled whiskeys made of 100% malted barley that got labeled "single malts" nonetheless. But while the rest of the world gushed about scotch and some of the more senior Japanese distilleries, American single malts grew from mere marketing gimmicks to refined, colorful pours with eyebrow-raising flavors and a focus on grain characteristics. The result is some beautiful whiskeys.

It's true that when you don't have years of aging to work with, you're incentivized to shift some of the burden of personality to the grain. But American single malts are increasingly young by choice, and there's no sense in acting like it's a bad thing. There are some fascinating things to be done with grain-forward distilling, and Americans, whether by necessity or preference, are doing them.

The Distillery

The Alcohol Professor has spoken with Matt Hofmann co-founder and Master Distiller at Westland Distillery before about his distillery's singular single malts. Today, just as in 2015 and 2020, Westland's flagship bottle bears no age statement, though we do know the whiskey is aged a minimum of 40 months. Westland, in its ten-year ascent as an American single malt standard bearer, has never staked too much of its reputation on what goes on in its cavernous rackhouse.

Hofmann’s thoughts on the topic are half-pragmatic — a reaction "to the apocalypse" as he refers to climate change's effects on barley and the fragile "pure" barley crop most farms grow for distillers — and half-flavorful, given the nuances that come from barley that's grown in spite of that commodity system. But it's 100% about the grain.

Westland Distillery barrel room — Westland barrel room photo courtesy Westland

"To adapt to a changing climate, what we need is to build resilience into the things that we're sourcing," he noted last year in a conversation with the Alcohol Professor. "If you have increased disease pressure, which you will with a changing climate, if you've got drought stress, which you do with the changing climate — with more genetic diversity in the field, some of that barley will fall off, but more of it can grow again to replace it. The cool thing about that is what that's going to do for flavor.

Westland Distillery's Washington select malt — Westland Washington select malt photo courtesy Westland

"We plant something that's got a lot of this genetic variability in it, there's going to be variation in what we harvest. That's actually going to give us more complexity in the whiskey. The way that we define malted barley at Westland is going to be different in ten years from the way that people define it today — it's going to be more genetically variable, it's going to have more color, non-commodity, it's going to be more resilient to climate pressure, and it's going to be more complex because of it."

Complexity doesn't completely preclude consistency, as Hofmann noted when looking ahead at this year's flagship release — just not the sort of generational consistency other distillers aim for. Westland will never be your grandad's whiskey, nor your grandchild's whiskey, either. For one, it's a stress on his blender, who'd have to balance a catalog of thousands of ever-changing barrels for a reliable flavor profile. For another, it's just not Westland's style. "The new flagship whiskey that we've got … we want it to be consistent for this next little run here. But there will be a new version of that in 2030. We know that we're only going to be able to replicate this flavor profile for eight or nine years before we're going to have to reskin this idea a little bit. And we don't fear that at all."

Hofmann isn't unaware of the risk of deviation in a market known for old reliables. "We're placing a pretty big bet on this, if I'm honest, from a business standpoint – that there are people out there, consumers out there, whiskey drinkers, who will care."

Westland's current Flagship Single Malt Whiskey (92 proof, $75.00) is one you're going to want to care about.

The Single Malt

Westland American Single Malt Whiskey — American Single Malt photo courtesy Westland

This flagship's pedigree is diverse and might require a master taster to identify all the unique intonations in the final product. Westland starts with a grainbill of Washington pale malt, Munich malt, extra special malt, pale chocolate malt, brown Malt and Baird's heavily peated malt. Belgian brewer's yeast — a purposeful allusion to Seattle's beer culture — brings these flavors together mightily then lets them age in a barrel bringing new American oak, used American oak, first fill ex-bourbon and first-fill/second-fill former Oloroso (sherry) hogsheads and butts.

On the nose, this single malt smells lightly of raisins and buttered toffee mixed with the refreshing bitterness of fresh walnuts and Barq's root beer. There's an earthy rootiness to this that for some is going mirror old-fashioned sweets — compote, maple brittle — but to me it's telling of barley with identity. It's possibly the Baird's heavily-peated malt coming through, too, but instead of smoke of that peat has mellowed into a healthy-earthiness. I'd love to sip this whiskey over a freshly-plowed field and see what my nose thought.

On the front of your tongue, this whiskey melts like snow, the near-effervescence and fleeting sweetness of sprite with honey mixed with the buttery sweetness of pine nuts and beeswax. This is a surprisingly light whiskey, almost lighter than water in mouthfeel.

As a result, it washes off your tastebuds faster than you'd like, leaving behind soft-spoken, floral flourishes upfront and, on the back, good and plenties meet banana bread and end in malted milk balls — you can taste some of the "over-modified" malt that malted a little too much, but that's part of the charm for this whiskey.

You'll notice there's no mention of oakiness here. I wouldn't be surprised if this whiskey leaves its last barrel right at 40 months, because oak is only a supporting actor in this feature; the grain does the talking. Hofmann notes: "This new flagship whiskey is a departure from American oak because we feel like we've evolved, and that's okay.”

It's a strong showing for a distillery that's sincere about the fact that that next decade's flagship is going to be different. According to Hofmann, "Westland is not about a house style. A lot of the players will say 'x distillery in Scotland is about the house style that comes from the still shape.' And Westland is perpetual forward momentum. That is the house style.”

Westland Distillery still room — Westland still room photo courtesy Westland

He adds, "That legacy of 200 years of whiskey making is not something that we can offer. Fortunately, there are a lot of these people, coming to Westland who are interested in provenance, in tasting different things. Who have a similar philosophy to myself in terms of things that express place. And there's more, luckily, more and more of those people all the time."