Who makes whiskey? A laconic Scot tending a still in the Highlands? A good old boy nursing his sour mash in Kentucky? A moonshiner brewing sneaky Pete up yonder in the holler?
They're not the only kinds of whiskey makers anymore. Lately there's been an explosion of handmade whiskey here on the West Coast. Forget Scotland and Kentucky -- we have a crop of eager Western dudes who want to create a distinct Western style of whiskey.
They're taking this nouvelle whiskey idea in wildly differing directions -- rough and powerful, sweet and fruity, gnarled and smoky, mellow and harmonious. The result is whiskeys with very distinct personalities, whiskeys you don't find anywhere else.
In the last few years six distilleries have started making and selling whiskey in California and Oregon, and two more will join them in the next year or so. An equal number of outfits up and down the coast are eyeing the idea. Already we have three times as many (legal) pot-still distilleries as the rest of the country combined.
Easterners may be puzzled. The West Coast is known for lighter drinks -- beer and wine. In fact, that may be exactly why small-batch whiskey is happening here. "West Coast consumers are more receptive to craft whiskey," says Lee Medoff of Edgefield Distillery near Portland, Ore. "They've grown up with wineries and microbreweries."
A distinctive process
Most of the world's whiskey is made in high-volume continuous stills that can produce thousands of gallons a day. The West Coast craft whiskey movement has gone back to the antique pot still, which is more labor intensive and a lot less productive, yielding perhaps five gallons per batch. But it produces a more distinctive result, which is why single-malt Scotch has always been pot-distilled.
The whiskey makers come from two quite different traditions. There are brewers -- down-to-earth guys from craft breweries who know their grains -- and there are makers of European-style fruit brandy (eau de vie), with its goal of preserving delicate fruit flavors through the brutal process of distillation.
The transition to whiskey is attractive for an eau-de-vie distiller -- he just contracts with a brewery to deliver a batch of beer made to his specs and then distills it. Now the distillery needn't have a down season; you can make whiskey all year round, even when there's no fresh fruit.
On top of that eau de vie is a narrow, exotic sliver of the American beverage market, whereas whiskey is already familiar to the public.
