Whisky : Westland Garryana 2018 Edition 3.1

Country/Region : United States/Washington

ABV : 56%

Cask : Virgin American Oak, Ex-Bourbon, Ex-Port Wine, Virgin & Refill Garryana/Oregon Oak

Age : 4+

Tasting : Neat in a Glencairn @ Home

Nose : Marinating BBQ pork ribs: brown sugar, black pepper, salt, vinegar, onion, tomato, paprika, garlic, and mustard seed.  Faint smoke of a freshly lit charcoal grill.  Sweetness of grilled pineapples and peaches.  A bit of water opens up more herbal and earthy notes like freshly watered grass and clovers.

Palate : Sweet floral tea; red rooibos sweetened with honey and just a hint of menthol.  Dried plums and figs present a concentrated sweetness with a bit of spice.  Saltpeter and summer fireworks give a distant but discernible smoke.  Bit of salt and vinegar like rich curried duck egg potato chips.

Finish : Long and lingering, finger licking BBQ sauce fades to grass and dried flowers.

Score : 8

Mental Image :  Summer time in the country, Fourth of July Fireworks have just wrapped up, the smell of evening BBQ and gunpowder mingle in the air.

Something Similar : Kilchoman Single Cask Sherry (heavier smoke, more tobacco, less sweet)

Something Worse : Highland Park 12 Year (similar smoke & fruit, more iodine, weaker body)

Notes : My introduction to Westland and what a cracker it was: peat, sweet, and bbq all come together beautifully.

Aside from being my first Westland it was also my first experience with Oregon/Garryana Oak, so the profile of the oak was… or still is… a bit of a mystery to me. After trying it across a number of different evenings and comparing it to other non-Garryana Oak Westland releases, I wondered if the Oak gave the dram some of its tangy sweet vinegar BBQ notes, or if it perhaps emphasized those notes.

I was drawn to this bottle by the story behind it and a little bit of FOMO— the fear of missing out that any limited edition stokes.

The Westland Native Oak experiments are a labour of love.  Garryana or Oregon Oak has not traditionally been widely commercially cultivated.  As a result there are not large stocks of it for Westland to draw from for cask production.  It is a keen fascination with terroir that drives the project.  French, Spanish, Hungarian, American, Mizunara: different Oak varietals carry with them the flavors of the soil and climate in which they develop.  Garryana Oak is the same, its characteristics and flavors influenced by the climate of the Pacific Northwest.

Without an existing market for the wood Westland have gone to great lengths to source useable Garryana Oak from the backroads and lumberyards of the Pacific Northwest.  The project is even more impressive when one considers that the oak takes 3-5 years to cure and even be useable for cask production.  The distillery must be patient and carefully plan out how to use this limited resource.  The project has to constantly evolve— always with an eye to the long term; whether planning 4-5 years out for casks to be available, 4-5 years for single malt to mature, or decades for new groves of Garryana Oak, planted by Westland, to one day be mature.

I love the clarity of provenance that Westland provides; there is nothing hidden.  The ages of the casks, the types of wood, the types of barley, the type of yeast, the length of fermentation; everything is shared because the team at Westland is truly passionate about distilling and sharing their passion.  It’s a dream come true for someone such as myself who drinks a whisky, loves it, and wants to learn more about it.