What’s happening in wine and whiskey this week:

This Week’s Unicorn Review Stories

🍷 Oregon has come into its own as a sparkling wine region. These are some of the best producers to check out.

🥃 Redemption and Proof and Wood founder Dave Schmier has a lot of thoughts about how people have looked at sourcing whiskey over the years. We spoke to him to find out more.

New Bottle Releases

Smokehead 15

Ian Macleod Distillers launched this new single malt earlier this fall. It’s an Islay whisky distilled at an undisclosed facility that was aged for 15 years before bottling, the oldest to date from the brand. The whisky is bottled at 43 percent ABV and has notes of vanilla, citrus, botanicals, and of course a healthy dose of peat smoke on the palate. 86 proof; SRP $70

Johnnie Walker 52

This is the oldest whisky to date from Johnnie Walker (and one of the most expensive), and it just became available here in the U.S. a few months ago in a run of only 30 bottles. Aged for more than half a century, this blend includes malt and grain components from some of Diageo’s ghost distilleries that closed long ago. 82.4 proof; SRP $25,000

Whiskey Del Bac Normandie

This Arizona single malt is an annual limited release. The whiskey is initially aged in new charred oak barrels and then finished in casks that were previously used to mature Calvados, a French apple brandy. There’s a subtle dose of smoke in each sip, the result of the barley having been smoked with mesquite wood to give it a thoroughly Southwest flavor that goes wonderfully with the apple and citrus notes on the palate. 97 proof; SRP $90

Unicorn Whiskey Pick of the Week

Woodinville 100% Rye Aged 8 Years

There is a lot of good whiskey being made in all corners of the country, but some of the best has been quietly coming out of the town of Woodinville, a small suburb of Seattle. Woodinville Whiskey released its first bourbon almost a decade ago, and since then has been steadily making bourbon and rye, along with some cask-finished expressions, that can stand with the best from Kentucky. The distillery was acquired by Moet Hennessy in 2017, so technically it’s not a craft distillery anymore, but it continues to make whiskey on a pretty small scale compared to the big operations in Kentucky and Tennessee.

This new whiskey is the oldest rye release to date from the distillery, an eight-year-old expression made from a mashbill of 100 percent rye grain. While whiskey production takes place in Woodinville, from milling to mashing to distilling, it’s aged in the town of Quincy which is located in Central Washington where the climate is more suitable for barrel maturation. The result is a really tasty but unique rye whiskey, and one that is very different from what you might expect if you’ve mostly been drinking either Kentucky-style “just legal” rye or 95-percent rye produced at MGP in Indiana.

At 100 proof, there is some heat as you sip, but we’re not talking barrel-proof here, so it’s not going to cause any palate fatigue. This is a rich and complex rye whiskey that is not very sweet, which you’d expect given that there is no corn at all in the mashbill. The rye spice is immediate, with notes of licorice, menthol, caramel, and molasses that pop up on the front and back ends of the palate. This is definitely a sipping whiskey, but it’s also one that works quite well in a drink like a Manhattan—the fact that this rye is much drier than others means it works well with the sweet vermouth and bitters. If you’re not a rye fan, this whiskey might be a bit perplexing, but if you’re a diehard fan of the fruity, spicy joys of this American whiskey category, you’re in for a treat. (SRP $130)

Unicorn Wine Pick of the Week

Autumnal Chardonnays from Oregon

All of my friends have been talking about the weather in LA this week. The requisite haze (more fog than smog) has lifted, and the air is crisp leaving the mountains etched against piercing blue skies like diamonds in the lambent wintry light.

And it’s cold—not the sort of cold other parts of the country are experiencing, but cold enough to see your breath at night, and to blast the furnace for an hour in the morning. The oven’s fired up; I’m back to roasting poultry and root vegetables, celery root and squashes and yam slices dusted with paprika. And I’m opening autumnal whites. This week, the focus was on Oregon Chardonnay, and I have two wines to recommend.

The first is a debut called Atomique³ from the Eola Hills, a collaboration between Felipe Ramirez, Pedro Parra, and Ian Lombard (Jean-Marc Roulot, of Domaine Roulot, consults). The team (Parra prefers the word “cast”) came together through the force of nature that was Mark Tarlov, founder of Rose and Arrow and Chapter 24 wineries in Oregon, who passed away in 2021.

I could and probably will write a long story on Tarlov one day soon—or perhaps a book. There was no one like him in the wine industry. One of the things he did best was draw together talent, and he was remarkably persuasive even to Burgundy legends like Roulot (he worked with Dominique Lafon and Louis-Michel Liger Belair as well). Ramirez too was working in Burgundy, as was Chilean terroir specialist Parra. Tarlov compelled all of them to come to Oregon.

Ken Pahlow of Walter Scott worked for Tarlov for a winery he founded called Evening Land, and was lucky enough to spend time at the shoulder of Dominique Lafon through that winery’s early years. He took those early experiences to the brand he founded with his wife Erica Landon, Walter Scott. (I wrote about Walter Scott earlier this year. You can read the profile here.)

Atomique³ 2021 Le Basalt 

Atomique³ 2021 Le Basalt is one such wine (it has a sold-out counterpart with a soil-inflected name as well called Le Sedimentaire). As the name implies, it comes from a vineyard with basalt dominant soils called Eola Springs. Ramirez, the boots-on-the-ground winemaker, has made a thrillingly savory wine, showing a nutty, leesy savor in advance of a lush attack. The finish is all French, remarkably firm and enveloping, lifted by a pure, adrenaline-like hit of acidity and a mineral tinge that lasts, rendering the wine agreeably ageable.

Walter Scott 2022 Mt. Pisgah of Polk County, Willamette Valley, “Lucille” Chardonnay

Ken Pahlow and Erica Landon draw from old plantings at Freedom Hill Vineyard, which lies just outside of the Eola Hills and is a venerated old vine site (it’s named for their daughter Lucy). Pahlow and Landon are known for vivid, savory Chardonnays made in a bracing, reductive style. Vestiges of that are found here, overlaying scents of lemon blossom, terse apple, and appleskin flavors. It’s all framed with a healthy rasher of new oak that feels integrated even as it assures a long cellar life for this wine.