If sparkling whiskey were a thing, malt whiskey distillers would be popping open some celebratory bottles across the country.
In December 2024, the TTB announced the conclusion of the rulemaking process for American single-malt whiskey, with the new style designation taking effect January 19. That concludes a nearly decade-long effort by domestic single-malt producers and the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission (ASMWC).
While rules already existed for “malt whiskey” and “whiskey distilled from a malt mash,” both allow for the inclusion of up to 49 percent of other, unmalted grains. Consumers are familiar with single-malt whiskeys from other countries, but there was nothing analogous to it in the U.S. classifications. That created the potential for confusion among drinkers while muddying the waters for American distilleries seeking to tap into that part of the market.
Meeting Consumer Expectations
Paul Hletko, founder of Chicago’s FEW Spirits and a founding member of the ASMWC, says the commission’s goal was to create a space for domestic producers to meet consumer expectations.
“What we wanted to do when we were putting this together was to understand that when the American consumer sees the words ‘single malt,’ they have been trained by the definition of Scotch,” he says. “Whether that’s right or wrong, we can discuss that philosophically, but that’s the reality, and as producers, it’s our responsibility to make sure that the consumer and the person who’s drinking this is getting what they think they’re getting.”
Hletko and others point to Matt Hofman, cofounder and former master distiller at Westland Distillery in Seattle, as the engine that drove progress in those early days. Hofman has moved on from the distillery, but current Westland master distiller Tyler Pederson—who joined the distillery in 2013, before it had released its first products—saw the situation evolve from labeling arcana into a full-fledged designation.
“When I showed up at Westland and I saw the original label and bottle design, I had so many questions,” he says. “This category, at that time, didn’t exist.” Westland and other distilleries were using a workaround on labels, putting “American single malt” on one line and “whiskey” on a separate line, preserving the integrity of the spirit type—whiskey—in the TTB’s eyes.
While that approach passed legal muster, retailers and consumers remained unfamiliar with the style. Pederson found himself sometimes working sales in those early days, meeting liquor-store owners and bar managers who were confused about where those bottles belonged on the shelf. In 2014 and 2015, the Westland team was figuring out how to position their whiskey in a category that’s hundreds of years old—“We’re not Scotch, we’re American,” Pederson says. “We’re different but at the same time comfortably familiar”—meanwhile realizing that, even with their first releases, there was more to this new category than nuanced labeling.
“It was very clear that we were going to have to get together with some of the other strong producers and try to define this category for ourselves, so that it wasn’t going to be defined on our behalf,” Pederson says. “We wanted to be in the driver’s seat. Single-malt whiskey, from the start, was the only thing that Westland had ever made. The success of the category was more than just a single product SKU for us. It was everything.”
A Long Road
In 2016, they started having conversations with other malt-whiskey producers, banding together with Balcones in Texas, Copperworks in Seattle, FEW in Chicago, Headframe in Montana, Santa Fe Spirits in New Mexico, Triple Eight in Massachusetts, Virginia Distillery, and Oregon’s Westward Whiskey to form the commission, which now numbers nearly 100 members.
The TTB notes in its December 18, 2024, posting to the Federal Register that in late 2017 it received similar petitions to create a single-malt designation from three distilleries, as well as a similar petition from the ASMWC. In response, the agency published a notice of proposed rulemaking in 2018, receiving hundreds of comments in support of creating such a standard.
In July 2022, the TTB published a proposal to add American single-malt to the standards of identity, based on the earlier petitions and comments in response to its 2018 notice. The proposed rule for the style included requirements that the whiskey be mashed, distilled, and aged in the United States; distilled entirely at one U.S. distillery to less than 160 proof; produced from 100 percent malted barley; aged in oak vessels no more than 700 liters in volume (about 185 gallons); and bottled at a minimum of 80 proof.
In the summer of 2024—after waiting two years to hear back from the TTB—the commission worked with the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States to lobby the agency and engage the industry in a letter-writing campaign to push for a final ruling on the style. The American Craft Spirits Association made it a point of pressure in their annual legislative fly-in to Washington, D.C.
Colin Keegan, commission member and founder of Santa Fe Spirits, says he thinks that campaign “got their attention, but the people who are allowed to talk to us just kept saying, ‘We’re working on it.’”
Ultimately, the definition proposed in July 2022 remained unchanged in the December 2024 announcement, paving the way for U.S. distillers to grow and expand the newest legal category of spirits.
Pushing Innovation
“It’s exciting that it’s done,” Hletko says. “It’s really gratifying to see stuff that we worked really hard on come into fruition. And I think it’s really nice the consumer now has much more protection over what they get. We are talking about, realistically, spending 60, 70, 100 bucks on a bottle of liquor. They should get what they expect.”
Keegan says the new designation is already a talking point when he visits liquor stores.
“My pitch [is], ‘You’re now going to be able to know what we’re talking about when we say American single-malt,’” he says. “It won’t be like, ‘Single-malts all come from Scotland,’ or ‘Well, I heard that Japan’s making good ones.’ You’ve got some good ones here, and that’s why we’ve got a category.”
Keegan says he thinks the formalization of the category will encourage distillers to push some of their more unique products further out into the market. At Santa Fe, he says, their Pedro Ximénez-finished whiskey originally stayed in the distillery tasting room, eventually making its way to other outlets around the state. Now, he’s eyeing it for out-of-state sales.
“For the stores that have the shelf space—and my guess is that’s about 20 percent—we can go deeper in the stores that really get craft whiskies or craft spirits,” he says. “I think it’ll embolden us a little bit more to take what we have in our distilleries and start taking it out into the open market.”
Pederson says the past nine years required a lot of effort educating people, convincing them of what was possible, and building momentum for the category. He likens it— “because I’m here in Seattle,” he says—to the impact of a single raindrop versus the ability of a downpour to reshape topography.
“It gives the industry confidence to put more of their energy and resources into growing this category,” he says. “I think you’re going to see a continued strong push of innovation that’s really going to drive a lot of interesting products for consumers to try, and at a time when the industry kind of needs it. This is something refreshingly new.”
A World of Possibilities
He notes the “breathtaking” variety of choices available to distillers who want to work within the new rules while creating something uniquely their own. In distillation, he says, there’s a lot of room to play with different still sizes, types, and distillation method. On the maturation side, Washington state is home to an “amazing” local oak species, Quercus garryana, that might see more widespread usage.
“We’ve also got a local peat bog that we’re using, and I know that others in the region have started sourcing from that same peat bog,” Pederson says. “Seeing regional fingerprints in flavor production—not just from a single producer in one region, but how it’s represented across the country—is really, really exciting.”
He adds: “I think it’ll take time for us to really see, and for the pundits to really weigh in on what, if any, regional variance comes into play. I don’t know if we’re going to see a New England IPA versus West Coast IPA in fermentation styles from the Pacific Northwest versus Northeast, or anything like that, but it is going to be exciting to see how that develops.”
On the grain side, he says, the choices are wide open. “You can import Golden Promise and make some amazing whiskey with that, but you can also source from the farmer in your backyard, more or less. Both of those provide a lot of opportunity for some really good whiskey development.”
He describes the style’s focus on barley as an opportunity to help farmers. In Washington state, it rotates with cash crops such as potatoes, tulips, and wheat because it helps to improve the soil, with few farmers dedicated to barley as their primary crop.
“If we can give those farmers more opportunities for a valuable crop at a time when beer is on the decline, I think this is a really wonderful moment for us, and whiskey consumers, and farmers,” he says. “As more of us are going to be buying barley, there’s going to be demand for these small-grain economies that are capable of preserving the important characteristics that will be interesting later on, after being bottled.”
That level of identity preservation would also allow for greater insight into the impact of grain genetics, climate, and their interplay.
“When it comes to grain, there’s going to be a great exploration of how it’s grown, what’s being grown,” Pederson says. “Eventually, we could begin to get a really clear picture of the influences of terroir and genetics and how they relate to whiskey flavor.”
“It’ll be a long time before enough of us get barrels down and bottled to see what that data really look like, but I’m excited because this is the first step in that opportunity,” he says. “It’s giving us all the confidence to engage in this space that hasn’t existed. I’m kind of spinning still at what’s going to be coming out in-bottle in the next five and 10 years.”
It’s the beginning of a long road, but for a moment Pederson and others are reveling in the chance to finally engage with that journey, with the questions it raises, and with the learning opportunities it will offer.
“No matter what line of work I got into, there was really deep down a desire to be a part of something bigger than my individual contribution, and this is that moment,” he says. “There’s a lot that we all do for any business or any group that does that, but it very rarely is so tangible like this.”