Vermont’s Mad River Distillers, founded back in 2011, is a small craft distillery already known to our readers for its bourbon and rye whiskey offerings. They’ve apparently been working on an American single malt as well, and the first fruits of that labor recently debuted as Mad River Distillers Hopscotch Vermont Single Malt Whiskey.
Mad River Distillers Hopscotch, according to the distillery, is Vermont’s first (legal) American single malt. This is, of course, a super wide open category at this point, so the folks at Mad River went pretty traditional in their development of this spirit. They team with brewer Sean Lawson of Lawson’s Finest Liquids to produce a 100% barley beer wash as the whiskey’s base. Interestingly, 10% of it was maple smoked with wood sourced from the distillery’s farm.
After being distilled on Mad River’s Müller still the whiskey was put into new, charred American oak barrels to rest for a little over a year before being bottled at 46% ABV. It is extremely limited edition in nature, with only 200 hand-numbered bottles for sale at the distillery and select retailers in nearby Massachusetts.
“Hopscotch came about from our friendship with Sean and the idea that we had been interested in doing a Single Malt whiskey,” said Mad River Distillers’ Alex Hilton in a prepared statement. “We worked on a mash bill collectively that we felt would be well suited for a Single Malt. We distilled it, he added some hops then we barreled it. And then we waited…”
In terms of official tasting notes, there’s not much available on this whiskey. It has only been described as “a supple, flavorful whiskey that bridges the ground between the classic American whiskey style and the smoky tang of traditional Scottish Single Malts.”
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