Our Favorite Grain Whiskeys

After Beam Suntory purchased the Cooley Distillery and its brands, it was decided to replace the Greenore 8 Year bottling with this Kilbeggan 8 Year Single Grain. It is column-distilled from 100% corn mash-bill at the Cooley Distillery and aged at the Kilbeggan Distillery in ex-bourbon barrels. It was launched in travel-retail at the beginning of 2015.

The Exceptional is a blended grain whisky created from three different barrels from three different distilleries. One barrel was distilled in 2000 at the North British Distillery, one is from the Loch Lomand distillery, and one is a 30 year old whisky from the Carsebridge distillery. The latter distillery shut its doors in 1983. These whiskies were blended by Willie Phillips formerly with The Macallan and finished in first-fill sherry casks. Limited availability as only 1500 bottles were produced.

Released to the US in 2015, this whiskey from Teeling is a predominately corn-based single grain whiskey. This is fully matured in California red wine barrels. Bottled at 46% ABV it is non chill-filtered.

Nikka follows up its Coffey Single Grain Whisky with a Coffey Malt Whisky. Both were distilled in Coffey stills at their Miyagikyo distillery. In this case, the mash bill is 100% malt. However, even though the whisky was distilled at one distillery, it is technically not a single malt. That category must be distilled in pot-stills. This product was released in 2014 in European markets and the US as of May 2016.

Haig Club is a single grain whisky distilled at the Cameronbridge Distillery and is made from a mash bill of 90% wheat and 10% malted barley. After distillation, it is aged in a mix of first fill, refill and rejuvenated bourbon barrels for 6-7 years. Though single grain whiskies are the working horse of many blends, they are rarely bottled to shine on their own.

Though single grain whiskies from Girvan exist in the independent bottling world, you will almost never see single grain whisky from ANY distillery released at this age. With the mash bill predominately containing corn and aged mostly in American oak, this is essentially their 25 Year Single Grain: The Sequel. But much more “Godfather 2” than “Hangover 2.”

This single grain whiskey is produced using predominately corn with just a splash of barley. Typically, single grain whiskey is used for blending, but Greenore is not only produced to shine on its own, but is aged for 8 years. First fill bourbon barrels are utilized here.

Grain whiskies are the base for most blended whiskies throughout the world. Nikka has decided to use the column still (aka Coffey still) rather than the more modern continuous stills to retain more character to their final product. It is quite unusual, however, to bottle and sell this product instead of using it for blending. The grains used here are primarily corn with a splash of barley.

You might be asking "what is a grain whisky?" In short, it is whisky distilled in a continuous still from a mixture of cereals, most typically wheat, corn, and barley. These whiskies generally are sold very young to other blended whisky companies. What Compass Box have done here is to take grain whiskies from a few different grain distilleries, on average 25 years old, and blended them together. The result is superb.

The Snow Grouse was originally launched in 2008 as a retail-travel exclusive, though it has expanded its market (note: this is not yet available in the US). It is a blended grain whisky and apparently designed to be enjoyed straight from the freezer.