Wine Cask Finish: Stewarding the Soil

Westland was born out of the Pacific Northwest, it is something we speak of often. The people who named this whiskey, developed the flavors, and dreamed of the future for it called Seattle home. The whiskey itself was and is overtly inspired by the raw ingredients of the bountiful Pacific Northwest. One subliminal phenomenon we noticed over time is that the culture of the Northwest also leaves its fingerprints on our products, on our brand, on our story. The idea of Westland being reflective on culture where it’s made has been true from the very beginning.

So, when we first labeled and bottled Westland Wine Cask Finish to put on shelves in summer of 2024, this was another step in the same direction we’ve been walking for the last ten plus years. The local growers and vintners of Washington State have been kindred spirits and welcomed counterparts, familiar comrades to our whiskey production.

It’s nothing new that some outstanding wines are bred, born, and produced in Washington State. The local wine industry of Washington State happens to be the second largest winegrowing state in the US outside of California, and proves itself a major influence in our whiskey making.

As distillers, we have found a common adoration for soil and climate and how it affects our production cycles, how each whiskey tells the story of the years that formed it. We prefer to sow and harvest barleys for their flavor, showing each variety has unique characteristics that can even change year to year. The ethos of showcasing uniqueness every vintage resonates with us, as we have whiskeys of over thirty unique barley varieties aging in our warehouses, strung along various years and vintages. Wine markers, more than whiskey makers in our experience, more easily understand our desire at Westland to maintain direct relationships with our farmers.

We have always held closely the conviction that our whiskey is a direct product of agriculture. We’re subject to the weather patterns, the harvest cycles, and the unknown of what each year holds out in the fields. Time is also a very unique ingredient for both wine and whiskey production. To put it into perspective, career winemakers often only get a total of 40 attempts in their lifetime to create wine. Each year is a marker of learnings, findings, and hoping for the future of the wines they harvest to mature into something beautiful and share the story of the land. For whiskey production, we pay attention to the grain harvested, and then wait to see how the final spirit will grow in complexity as it ages, waiting a minimum of three years before bottling it. Time is required, and is the driving force behind the development of our products, the variable that helps shape each drop of our whiskey. Time marks progress we make year over year as we continue on our path of distilling.

Wine makers, more often than not, prioritize quality, in their fruit harvest of course, but also in the type of oak they use for aging. Oak quality is a necessary consideration for wine makers who choose to use casks in their wine production. Winemakers consider where the oak came from, whether it was kiln dried or air dried; winemakers pay attention to the species of oak and closely monitor the oak’s influence on their final wines.

Oak quality was something we found to be completely intertwined with our whiskeys, oak being a core ingredient of our single malts that are born of barley, water, yeast, and oak. From day one we preferred high-quality air-dried oak. We, like many distillers, payed attention to the toast and char levels, noting that different levels will have differing impact on the final whiskeys. But beyond the char, we value the raw ingredient of the wood itself. Early on, we sought partnerships with coopers directly such as Independent Stave Company and Oregon Barrel Works and Toneleria del Sur. We made friendships with coopers across the world as we explored the highest quality oak we could possibly find. Our friend Rick DeFerrari of Oregon Barrel works almost exclusively produces Garryana oak casks, and he himself comes from a wine cask background, gaining much of his early experience education in France. Without these partners, we truly believe that Westland Whiskey would not be the award-winning liquids you see on shelves today.

Of course, we have seen time and time again the interconnectedness of the local wine region. It brings us inspiration and also shared philosophy. Quality cannot be ignored, it is an understated ingredient at Westland. This, for us, made all the difference. We do view our whiskeys similarly to the way a vintner approaches his own stock of aging wines. But beyond the inspiration of the winemakers around us, we asked ourselves: What better way to showcase the bounty of the Pacific Northwest than to use Washington Wine casks for aging and finishing?

So, just as we built relationships with brewers who wanted to use our whiskey casks for aging beer, we decided to approach winemakers to use their delicious casks in our own process. We’ve built relationships with dozens of wine producers in our region, each one able to share with us the exact history of the cask and the wines that rested in it. We continued to build relationships and add to our stock of Washington wine casks. We have several vintages and unique wine grape varieties represented in our own rackhouses, including some port-style fortified wine casks that came from Washington state.

Our Master Blender, key-holder to many of these relationships and has fostered them over several years. Shane then intuitively and carefully chose to stack these casks into our beloved Wine Cask Finish single malt whiskey. Good whiskey can be simple, and for us, it is a story of place. This is the obvious and intentional through line for all our whiskeys, and Wine Cask Finish is no different. This whiskey, described by our staff as the perfect autumn sip, showcases Washington Cabernet Sauvignon casks and Syrah casks. We use a combination of full-term maturation and cask finishing. Wine cask is built for maximum flavor, which has become reinforced with global accolades. This whiskey is a standout, earning a spot on the Top 20 Most Exciting Whiskies in the World.

Westland continues to shake hands with winemakers in our own backyard, adopting their used casks soaked by the grapes of this region. Each batch of our whiskey will slightly differ from the next, just as each vintage of a beloved wine tells its own story of that harvest year. And so, on we go ahead, blending, bottling, and looking ever forward, holding the Northwestern inspiration closely in hand.