American

Seattle Distilling Idle Hour Whiskey

OVERALL
RATING

Whiskey Review: Seattle Distilling Idle Hour Whiskey

by Katelyn Best
April 18, 2016

Tasting Notes:

About:

Appearance:

Nose:

A heavy honey note predominates, alongside banana and rummy brown sugar. These dessert-like flavors are cut with a faint, but distinctly sharp chemical note. Altogether, it’s not unlike a freshly-ignited pan of bananas foster. In the emptied-out glass, I also get some winey notes.

Palate:

A little less cloying, with more dark fruit—black cherry and currant—evident, and some smoke. Honey and brown sugar are also noticeable. The finish is short and flat; fades to bitter oak and wine. Conclusion: Overall, this whiskey is an awkward mishmash of flavors, the rum-like character of the nose not quite gelling with the faint wine notes imparted by the barrel. The contrast between heady sweetness and sharp acetone gives it a distinctly youthful quality. It’s hard not to see the addition of honey and the cabernet-barrel aging as attempts to make up for the whiskey’s sprightly age, and none of it quite comes together. Final score: 77/100

Finish:

Comments:

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With the craft distilling scene in Seattle exploding these days, it’s perhaps ironic that one distillery using the city as its namesake is actually located a ferry ride away from the city. Vashon Island’s Seattle Distilling is a “two-family” operation selling itself on the same small batch, local, hand-crafted platform that’s long been a hallmark of Pacific Northwest food and drink producers. Increasingly, that ethos has permeated the whiskey world—where it’s often labeled “grain-to-glass”—resulting in a rash of just-opened small distilleries.

Seattle Distilling, for its part, opened in 2013, initially offering vodka, gin, and spiced rum as well as whiskey. Labeled with the wordy, slant-rhymed slogan, “Purpose and joy in kettle and coil,” all their spirits are made with Washington-grown ingredients, some of them from Vashon Island itself.

Their Seattle Distilling Idle Hour Whiskey is a single malt distilled from Palouse Valley barley, with “a touch of local wildflower honey added during fermentation.” It’s aged in cabernet sauvignon barrels that have been house-charred. I’m a little curious about that last step: I’m no chemist, but I have to wonder how much of the wine’s character is even retained in the barrels after they’ve been re-charred. In any case, it’s aged 10 months and bottled at 88 proof.

Tasting Notes:

Color: Cinnamon; a notch redder than many whiskeys

Nose: A heavy honey note predominates, alongside banana and rummy brown sugar. These dessert-like flavors are cut with a faint, but distinctly sharp chemical note. Altogether, it’s not unlike a freshly-ignited pan of bananas foster. In the emptied-out glass, I also get some winey notes.

Palate: A little less cloying, with more dark fruit—black cherry and currant—evident, and some smoke. Honey and brown sugar are also noticeable. The finish is short and flat; fades to bitter oak and wine.

Conclusion:

Overall, this whiskey is an awkward mishmash of flavors, the rum-like character of the nose not quite gelling with the faint wine notes imparted by the barrel. The contrast between heady sweetness and sharp acetone gives it a distinctly youthful quality. It’s hard not to see the addition of honey and the cabernet-barrel aging as attempts to make up for the whiskey’s sprightly age, and none of it quite comes together.