Wood's Tenderfoot American Malt Whiskey

Everything about this whiskey is precise and exactly what it needs to achieve the flavor profile that the Wood Brothers think it should be.

P. T. Wood looks like he was hired as an extra for the old TV show Grizzly Adams—big bushy hair and bread, graying all around, perpetual baseball-style “Wood’s” cap worn straight on… pragmatic, not stylish. When he speaks about distillation, with no sense of irony or pretension he refers to the water and grain as his color pallets and the still as his canvas. And he and his brother Lee make their spirits in an old auto-body shop in Salida, Colorado, at the headwaters of the Arkansas River.

I you do not love everything your read so far then there is something wrong with you.

The folks at Wood’s High Mountain Distillery are young at the game, starting in 2012, but are already making a name for themselves, using an antique copper still from Germany—named Ashley—to create no less than three varieties of Gin, two Whiskies, and a new liqueur called “Fleur de Sureau” which is a new entry into the Elderflower category.

So … what is Wood's Tenderfoot Whiskey? They call it their “single-malt Whiskey,” but is it? The secret is in the mix of grains. We don’t want to get all Whiskey-wonkish on you here, but let’s break it down. Tenderfoot is about 63% two-row barley, 9% cherry-wood-smoked barley, 6% chocolate-roast malted barley, 9% malted wheat, and 13% malted rye. And that may not be a classic recipe for single-malt Whiskey, you WILL find it singly delicious.

Everything about this whiskey is precise. The recipe is exactly what it needs to be to achieve the flavor profile that the Wood Brothers want it to be. Nothing more, and nothing less. But DO NOT drink it expecting a Scotch. Think of it as the missing link in the family of American Whiskies … a barley-malt forward native Whiskey where everything else takes a back seat.