American Single Malts: Virginia Distillery Company
Virginia Distillery Company’s American Single Malt Whiskies bear the name “Courage & Conviction.” To have the courage of one’s convictions means to do what you know is right, especially in the face of adversity. So begins the story of arguably one of the United States’ most uniquely melting-pot, American whiskies: a Scotch-inspired whisky begun by an Irish immigrant in the heart of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
Gareth Moore, CEO of Virginia Distillery Company
“(Americans) have this tendency to take old world things and make them our own,” says Gareth Moore, CEO of Virginia Distillery Company. “Whether it's co-opting a weird sandwich out of Hamburg, or how we're gonna spell Chef Boyardee.” (Note: the OG SpaghettiO chef was named Ettore Boiardi.) Or, as in Moore’s case, an American-made, effectively Scotch-style whisky.
As one of only a small handful of distilleries that basically make only American Single Malt Whiskey—a category only very recently recognized by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB)—Alcohol Professor continues its series on American Single Malts with Moore and Virginia Distillery Company, another leading proponent of the category.
The Distillery
Virginia Distillery Company was actually founded in 2011 by George Moore, Gareth Moore’s father, a tech retiree and Irish immigrant who nonetheless wanted to make whisky that more closely resembled Scotch than his homeland Irish whiskey. “I think our marketing people would have appreciated it if he were Scottish because single malts are more associated with Scotland. It’s like, why don't you guys make an Irish whiskey? It's just not what we're doing, okay?”
George Moore was about 18 months into the huge construction project to create the distillery—that included massive 10,000-liter pot stills, as well as warehouse and visitor center spaces—when he passed away from a heart attack, leaving the project in son Gareth’s hands. “I was very, very naive at the time,” says Moore. “Now I'm just very naive. So I've learned a lot. At the time it was like, whisky, that sounds easy, right? Where's the button? Let's start making whisky.”
In actuality, Virginia Distillery Company finally began distillation in late 2015, right on the cusp of the formation of the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission, which Moore became a founding member of, and which was responsible for the creation of the American Single Malt category with the TTB.
American Single Malt with a Distinctly Virginia POV
Taking a cue from Virginia’s growing wine industry, Moore initially believed his whisky operation, specifically the maturation environment, would require expensive, climate-controlled warehouses to mitigate the hot, humid conditions of Virginia’s brutal summers.
Moore enlisted the help of Dr. Jim Swan, a Scottish chemist who had previously helped advise Tawainese whisky brand Kavalan, which Moore recognized as having similar climatic challenges as he was working with.
“When I picked (Dr. Swan) up at Dulles Airport, by the time we made it down to the site, he had almost finished berating me about potentially using climate control,” recalls Moore. “He said, ‘Why wouldn't you just build a distillery in Scotland?’ He had this really good point that climate control would just really rob the whisky of its sense of place, turning into something that could have been made anywhere.”
Now the company’s website boasts the following mission statement: “Using the highest quality malted barley and fresh spring water fed from the Blue Ridge Mountains, our spirit was developed to leverage Virginia’s climate, allowing the broad temperature shifts to add depth to our whisky.”
Virginia Distillery Company Single Malts
Virginia Distillery produces only single malt whiskies, but with a wide variety of cask finishes. “It’s like Henry Ford said,” says Moore, “‘you can get any color as long as it’s black.’ So the casks are really where the experimentation goes. We’ve been trying to go as far as we can in terms of craziness, and we’ll see what works.”
Utilizing an STR method that was also developed by Dr. Swan—a term that stands for “shaving, toasting, and re-charring”—as a means of repurposing already-used barrels for additional maturation, Virginia Distillery Company offers several nuanced, award-winning expressions in its Courage & Conviction American Single Malt lineup: Courage & Conviction Flagship, (2022 New York International Spirits Competition Gold Medal winner,) Courage & Conviction Bourbon Cask, (2022 NYISC Bronze Medal winner,) Courage & Conviction Sherry Cask, (2022 NYISC Double Gold Medal winner,) Courage & Conviction Cuvée Cask (2022 NYISC Double Gold Medal winner,) and Courage & Conviction Cuvée Single Cask.
Additionally, Virginia Distillery company also currently offers several limited release expressions, as well as numerous bottlings under its VHW, “Virginia-Highland Whisky” lineup, which includes single malt whiskies, (but not American Single Malt Whiskies) that contain blends of both Virginia-made and Scottish single malts with various cask finishes: VHW Port Cask Finished Whisky (2022 NYISC Silver Medal winner,) VHW Cider Cask Finished Whisky, VHW Brewers Batch, and VHW Chardonnay Cask Finished Whisky.