Review: Tattersall Interstate Single Malt Whiskey 4 Years Old

Wisconsin’s Tattersall Distilling continues to push into the whiskey world, with the launch of its first American single malt. Inspired by (and named after) the first interstate park in the nation — crossing between Minnesota and Wisconsin — it’s a four year old whiskey that ages in virgin oak barrels.

Let’s crack it open.

American single malt has been evolving stylistically over the last few years, but Interstate remains a clear example of how it all got started. The nose is burly with aggressive, raw wood notes, a straight shot to the lumberyard with mild diversions running to roasted mushroom and some fragrant evergreen notes. Increasingly malty over time, the cereal core takes hold slowly, giving the whiskey a dusky, bready quality.

On the palate, few surprises arrive. This presents itself as a youthful, albeit approachable, American malt, again heavy with wood and toasted cereal notes, this time in relatively equal proportion. Mossy and earthy as it develops, the whiskey has a raw and sometimes doughy quality, showing some heat before a more straightforward, grassy character emerges. Toasted notes, wood and grain alike, keep things rumbling and smoldering into a lengthy finish that offers a mix of tobacco and ground pepper.

If all that sounds rather savory, it definitely is: There’s not a like of fruit or honeyed sweetness here, and the whiskey certainly could use it. What you get instead is a deep dive into the power of American barley slumbering away in a fresh oak barrel for years, and while the yin-yang of these two ingredients is powerful, it’s unfortunately two-dimensional.

90 proof.

B / $45 / tattersalldistilling.com

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