Whiskey Assessment: Woodinville Straight Bourbon Aged 8 Years

Editor’s Notice: This whiskey was supplied to us as a evaluation pattern by the social gathering behind it. Per our editorial insurance policies, this on no account influenced the result of this evaluation. 

Washington’s Woodinville Whiskey Co., based in 2010 by Brett Carlile and Orlin Sorensen, represents a barely older breed of craft whiskey makers who established themselves earlier than the “craft” motion was effectively off and operating within the whiskey house. The 2, solely armed with a need to show “one of the best never-sourced, actual craft whiskey could possibly be made in Washington state,” turned to the late David Pickerell, former Grasp Distiller for Maker’s Mark, for assist with making a distillery that will stand the take a look at of time.

The method of constructing Woodnville’s award-winning whiskeys is fairly easy – mashing and cooking of grains from the Omlin Household Farm in Quincy, Washington; a managed fermentation over 4 days; distillation via handmade, custom-designed 1,320-gallon German stills fabricated from copper; and aged a minimum of 5 years within the distillery’s Central Washington non-public barrel homes inside barrels constructed from wooden seasoned for 18 months in open air, wind, rain, and snow earlier than being coopered.

The outcomes of their labors have been a gentle stream of awards and business and client recognition over time, together with successful a Double Gold and the title of “Finest Straight Bourbon of 2020” for his or her flagship bourbon on the San Francisco World Spirits Competitors.

What’s within the bottle

The whiskey being reviewed right here, Woodinville Straight Bourbon Aged 8 Years, represents a brilliant nerdy whiskey experiment turned distinctive bottling. Carlile and Sorensen, working with barrel maker Impartial Stave Firm, tasted eight distinctly totally different barrels to see which might produce one of the best taste profile they have been searching for. The barrel sorts examined included #1 Char Customary Kiln-Dried, #2 Char Customary Kiln-Dried, #3 Char Customary Kiln-Dried, #4 Char Customary Kiln-Dried, #3 Char 18-Month Open-Air Seasoned, #5 Char 18-Month Open-Air Seasoned, Heavy Toast/Mild Char 24-Month Open-Air Seasoned and Skinny-Stave Barrel.

Brett and Orlin stuffed the eight take a look at barrels with new-make whiskey and waited. 4-and-a-half years later, the whiskeys have been prepared for evaluation by fuel chromatograph at ISC. The closely toasted, frivolously charred barrel constructed from 24-month open-air seasoned staves was discovered to have considerably greater quantities of “whiskey’s favourite core compounds,” however for them, it wasn’t fairly proper but.

They let it age additional, in the end deciding on one thing with an eight-year age assertion. Nonetheless, as they clarify it, it’s really “two years of stave growing older, 4 and a half years of preliminary growing older, and 4 further years within the barrel. 2 + 4½  + 4 = 10½ years of labor, persistence, and hope represented on this liquid, one of the crucial balanced, complicated, refined bourbons” they really feel they’ve ever created.

Woodinville Straight Bourbon Aged 8 Years, distilled from a mash invoice of 72% corn, 22% rye, and 6% malted barley, was bottled at 100 proof and priced at $129.