Single Malt Madeira Cask finish
Stillhead Distillery
Canada
50%
Mash bill: 100% BC malted barley
Barrels used: Ex-bourbon & finished in a Madeira wine cask
We are back to Vancouver Island for today’s dram! Stillhead is a family owned & run distillery in Duncan. Brennan Colebank, the owner & distiller, is fiercely passionate about whisky, grains, and the future of BC’s craft industry. Known for working with local farmers to have exactly what he wants to distil planted in the fields, this distiller is going places. He’s even partnered with a few Victoria bars to create custom blends for them to use in-house. Some of which haven’t even been released yet, so stay tuned!
Stillhead’s first big hit was their wild blackberry gin, made with locally picked wild Cowichan blackberries & Canadian honey. As with many craft distilleries, unaged spirits are their starting point to start selling & make enough money to make & age their whisky. In this case, the beginning spirits are epic and have a huge following! What a dream for a distillery that only opened its doors in 2017!
They're currently working on opening a BC spirits based cocktail lounge in the space next door, so anyone living nearby or visitors to the Cowichan Valley, be sure to put this stop on your list! It will hopefully be opening this coming Spring-Summer, just in time for us to visit and enjoy the incredible line up of spirits & taste the creativity & versatility they offer to cocktails!
Today's dram is another wine cask finish but very different from our deVine one a few days ago. Madeira is a fortified wine & this cask is from the Portuguese islands off of Africa. It was decades old but still exploding with fruit & sweet notes.
Tasting notes: The nose of sweet caramelized buttered brown sugar is a delicious precursor to what is about to happen. Immediately on the palate is the burst of rich berries combined with winter spices like nutmeg & cloves. If this whisky was a baked good, it would be a freshly baked blackberry spice pie with a crust that’s gently crisped with the butter bubbling up the sides.
What do you think?