Westward Whiskey is made in Portland, Oregon, in the heart of the Pacific Northwest, by a distillery that began life as House Spirits and has spent the past decade making one of the most coherent arguments for American single malt as a category. The whiskey is built on a foundation that is unusual in American distilling: a fully fermented ale wash, brewed with two-row pale malt and ale yeast, fermented slow and warm before being distilled in copper pots. It is, in effect, a beer-drinker's idea of how to make whisky — and it produces a malt-forward, fruit-laden spirit unlike anything else in the country.
The Pinot Noir Cask Finish takes Westward's American single malt and rests it in casks that previously held Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley, the cool-climate Oregon wine region whose Pinot has become one of the world's most respected. The casks are local — a few miles from the distillery, in some cases — and the wine they carried leaves behind a red-berry richness and a soft tannic grip that wraps perfectly around Westward's malty backbone.
The nose is generous: red berry compote, malted biscuit, dark chocolate and a faint note of pipe tobacco. The palate is black cherry and raspberry, malted barley sweetness, mocha and a soft tannic grip from the wine wood. The finish is long, fruity and gently drying, with red wine warmth and dark cocoa lingering in the close.
It is a brilliantly local whiskey — Oregon malt finished in Oregon Pinot, made within sight of the same hills that grew the grapes — and one of the clearest expressions yet of what American single malt can become.
