While we give nods to our own favorite whiskeys each year, we also pay attention to other year-end rankings of the brown stuff. And there’s perhaps no whiskey list that we look forward to more each year than the one from our friends at Whisky Advocate, which began handing out awards to bottles in the ’90s and has published a top-20 list online since 2017.
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The team at Whisky Advocate collectively samples hundreds of drams throughout the course of the year and then does the nearly impossible task of twiddling down their favorites to just 20 for the list. Since 2017, that list has been crowded at the top with single malt Scotch and bourbon — which isn’t too surprising given the premier status of those two categories in the whiskey/whisky industry.
Last year’s number one pick was Jack Daniel’s Bonded, which is a bourbon even if it’s not labeled as such. This year’s list looks mostly like you’d expect: single malt Scotches at the number one and two slots and a pair of bourbons sitting in the four and five positions. But the bottle coming in at number three is where things get interesting.
Westland Distillery’s Garryana Edition 8 snags the bronze this year on Whisky Advocate‘s list, marking the publication’s highest ranking yet for an American single malt whiskey. We’ve been banging the drum on ASM’s ascendance all year, and Westland’s ranking here is just the latest evidence that this category is on the verge of exploding in popularity. (It’s also on the verge of officially being classified as a new spirits category by the US Government.)
So what’s the story on Garryana Edition 8? It’s the eighth edition in the Garryana series, which is an ongoing series dedicated to the introduction and exploration of Garryana oak, a species native to the distillery’s home in the Pacific Northwest that had never before been used to age whiskey. For this eighth edition, Westland aged the whiskey in virgin casks made from Garryana before finishing the liquid in former Pedro Ximenez sherry casks and Washington State red wine casks. The result is a complex showcase for the oak’s savory spiciness that’s been rounded out by the fruity wine-tinged finishes.
