Bourbon, You've Got Company

American single malt whiskey is becoming an official categoryand it's about to boom

- Matthew Kronsberg

Late last year, Gareth Moore, chief executive officer of Virginia Distillery Co., was in Korea to raise awareness of his Courage & Conviction single malt whiskies. His main competition there wasn’t so much American bourbon or rye but “global” single malts such as Kavalan from Taiwan and Amrut from India. The local take on his product surprised and amused him. “There was this crazy term that I heard,” he recalls. “Cowboy hat with bagpipes.”

But while a US distillery pushing a single malt may seem to be a mishmash of cultures, it’s about to become a category defined by strict rules: Regulators are expected to ratify a binding definition of the American single malt any day now.

Lionized in Scotland, single malt whiskey at its most essential must be made at a single distillery that uses only malted barley in the mash. It doesn’t have to be bottled from a lone cask or be from a single year; in fact, most are blended from different barrels to produce a consistent product. And yet, taste a campfire-in-a-glass Lagavulin 16-year-old against a floral, fruity Glenlivet 12, and you’ll understand the broad range of styles that can be achieved within these rules. And that’s just from Scotland, a country roughly the size of South Carolina.