Sonoma County, California, may be more famous for wines than spirits, but Spirit Works is trying to change that with their woman-led distilling team (which is pretty cool and becoming less uncommon these days but still worth getting excited about) and pretty much complete line of spirits, including a sloe gin and a barrel-aged sloe gin, unusual by most standards, but a nod to Timo’s English roots. Spirit Works, which was started by Ashby and Timo Marshall (Ashby is the distiller in the family), has a “grain to glass” mentality when it comes to their products; using local organic grains and maintaining complete control of their process by milling, mashing, fermenting, distilling, aging, and bottling on their property.
Coming in at 45% abv is their Straight Wheat whiskey; a 100% locally-grown, red winter wheat whiskey that has been aged for a minimum of two years in new American oak and joins their other whiskey offering of straight rye. My bottle was from barrel 13-0017/13-0018, which saw two years and one month in oak before being non-chill filtered and bottled at 45% abv.
What’s in the bottle? Some nice whiskey, to be frank; it has good body, aromas of warm honey, a soft wheat flavor profile with notes of almost over-toasted pretzels. It’s certainly a wheat whiskey, with none of those spice or sweet notes one might find in a bourbon due to the addition of rye and corn. It calls out to a lighter-style single malt such as Suntory Toki from Japan or Amrut from India without hitting overly-complicated notes of smoke or too much heat.
At some level, it feels like a really good introduction to single-malts for those who aren’t familiar with the category and want some training wheels. But this isn’t “lady whiskey;” it’s a fun bottle for collectors and those who like to have a one-off on their bar to talk up because woman are making waves in distilling and this is one of those distilleries.
Tasting Notes: Spirit Works Straight Wheat Whiskey
Vital stats: Distilled and bottled in-house from locally-grown red winter wheat. Non-chill filtered after being barrel-aged in new American oak for 2.1 years and bottled at 90 proof.
Appearance: Brushed copper melting into a light nectar, moderate glycerin.
Nose: Caramel sundae without the ice cream, nutty, malty.
Palate: Burnt toffee, slightly sweet and hot, unexpected spice notes, hints of cocoa nib and pecan.
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