We're on to month 2 of our curated Flights!

I apologize for the delay in posting, but you know how life can get. Don't worry, next month will be on time. I'm already working on it.

But for this month, we are fcousing on the relatively "new style" of American Single Malts.

For a long time, “single malt” lived in the Scotch and Irishsection of my brain. That was where I knew it, and apparently I had decided that's exactly where it belonged. Then I tried Westland.

My first American single malt gave me a reason to reconsider my little mental filing system and since then, I’ve been introduced to single malts from all over the world. And the more I explore, the more I appreciate how much
room there is within those two words.

So, what does “single malt” actually mean? The “single”refers to a single distillery—not one barrel, one batch, or one particular barley variety. For Single Malt, the “malt” simply means the whiskey is made entirely from malted barley: barley that has been allowed to begin germinating before being dried. That process helps make its starches available for conversion into the necessary sugars for fermentation. It can include whiskey from multiple barrels and differentages, all produced at that one distillery. And those two words alone don’t define whether it will be smoky, fruity, delicate, or rich. There’s still plenty left to discover in the glass.

Here in America, getting single malt its own legallyrecognized category took some patience. The American Single Malt Whiskey Commission formed in 2016, and the federal standard finally took effect on January 19, 2025. Nearly nine years of work to officially define something distillers were already making—and some of us were already happily drinking. (Bureaucracy, right?)

Apparently, whiskey isn’t the only thing that takes years tomature. Sometimes the paperwork does, too.

But that recognition matters. American whiskey has so much more to offer than the handful of categories we tend to reach for first. Not every American whiskey is a bourbon, a rye, or “a Jack Daniel’s.” There’s a whole world of malted barley being explored right here, with different approaches to fermentation, distillation, barrels, and the places those barrels call home. And lately, I’ve been able to experience more of it than ever.

This month’s flight brings together Westward, WestlandAmerican Oak, Balcones Lineage, and New Riff Sour Mash Single Malt. Westland feels particularly fitting: it was my introduction to American single malt, and now I get to share it alongside three other interpretations of what that can mean.

I love when something I thought I understood turns out to have a much bigger story. It gives me another reason to keep tasting, keep learning, and occasionally reorganize the whiskey section of my brain.

Now that American single malts are officially a thing… next stop, American single grains!

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Below are the tasting notes lined out, so if you want to explore on your own without any accidental bias, stop scrolling now.

Enjoy!

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