Woodinville 5 Year Old 2017 SMWS Single New Oak Charred Barrel B8.1 Last-Minute Thriller Washington Straight Bourbon Whiskey (2022) 70cl
1 of 217 bottles produced from a single New American Oak Charred Barrel.
The first edition of distillery Woodinville in Washington.
TASTING NOTES
Delicious fruity aromas of juicy red cherries and strawberry shoelace sweets blended in a big mixing bowl with banana bread, cinnamon buns and vanilla cookie dough. A spicy tingle on the tongue introduced a sprinkle of cayenne pepper, plus pineapple jelly sweets, marmalade and liquorice sticks dipped in pine sap. Chalky textures from sherbet bath bombs crumbled into powder when we added water, mixing with oak sawdust steeped in vanilla essence. Stewed gooseberries and rhubarb were now served in a coconut crumble, finished with vanilla cream, a few spruce sprigs and a cup of sweet earl grey tea.
About Woodinville Whiskey Co
Located in Woodinville, Washington (just outside Seattle), the founders of Distillery of Woodinwville have been living a dream since 2010. With the help of the late great Dave Pickerell (of Maker’s Mark and Whistle Pig fame to name a few) to mentor them and of a Central Washington farm to go all-in and provide a truly grain-to-glass production process, that dream has become a multiple-award-winning reality.
The story of Woodinville doesn’t begin with a 100-year-old recipe or generations of family distillers. It starts with two best friends, Orlin Sorensen and Brett Carlile, and their shared dream of proving that the best whiskey doesn't have to be made in Kentucky. Or Scotland. It can be made right here in Washington State.
Orlin and Brett had a strong belief from the beginning: to make the best liquids, you can't cut corners and must do things the right way, even if they're inefficient. The highest quality locally grown grains, the best barrels and coopers in the world, the most technologically advanced distilling equipment, and the mentorship of an industry icon: David Pickerell, former Master Distiller for Maker’s Mark.
"After five years of hard work, we released our flagship Straight Bourbon Whiskey in 2015 to a line of more than 300 people. Since then, the American Distilling Institute has awarded our whiskey “Craft Whiskey of the Year” and “Craft Rye Whiskey of the Year” two years in a row. In March 2020, in perhaps their most prestigious honor to date, the San Francisco World Spirits Competition gave its highest honours to that same flagship bourbon: a Double Gold medal and the title of “Best Straight Bourbon Whiskey of 2020.”
Each day at our distillery, we start with two-and-a-half tons of locally grown non-GMO corn and rye from the Omlin Family Farm in Quincy, Washington. We mill every kernel into fine flour. Then we mix the flour with purified water from the Cascades. We cook the mixture to turn the starches into sugar.
Once mashing is complete, we move the mixture into one of our eight 9,000-gallon fermenters. We add yeast and let the mash rest for four days before distillation. It’s a controlled fermentation—a key difference between Woodinville and mega-distilleries. Working in smaller batches allows us to maintain the mash’s temperature, and thus the activity in the fermentation, within two degrees.
Our mash runs 20% sugar, unusually high for the industry and an absolute feast for the
yeast. Once the yeast has finished converting all that sugar to alcohol during fermentation, it’s time to distill.
The mash is pumped into the still and the distillation begins. Alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, concentrates, and leaves the still as a vapor.
Our handmade, custom-designed 1,320-gallon German stills are made of copper hammered just outside the Black Forrest of Germany by third-generation copper smiths. Eight “superaromator“ trays refine and purify the alcohol in the column. The highly refined vapors are re-condensed into a liquid, and the whiskey is born. Only the “hearts” of the run meet our standards and are collected. After the whiskey is distilled, it’s proofed to 55% alcohol by volume with purified Cascade Mountain water. The barrel wood is seasoned for 18 months in open air, wind, rain, and snow before being coopered. We fill the barrels with new make whiskey at our processing and aging facility in Quincy, WA. All our whiskey is aged for at least five years at our Central Washington private barrel houses. Hot summers and cold winters cause expansion and contraction in the barrels, forcing the whiskey deep into the wood, where it can steal coveted vanilla, butterscotch, and spice notes. This process repeats over five years so what emerges when it’s time to bottle is a whiskey of stunning complexity, character, and finesse.
It fluctuates through the year, but typically the Woodinville production crew bottles biweekly. After their five-year slumber, the barrels are decanted, filtered, chilled, proofed down (except for cask-strength runs), and filtered. Then the liquid is pumped to the bottling line, where the finished whiskey fills handsome rectangular bottles with cork tops and “Made in Washington” running down the sides.
57.4% ABV
70cl
