Westland Distillery was launched in 2010 in Seattle, WA with the customer promise to create a distinctly American-style single malt whiskey, using the Washington state-grown ingredients. I chose Westland as an excellent example of effectiveness. Westland creates and captures value by crafting a high quality, distinctly American Northwest product by using ideal geography, as well as innovative production inputs and process steps within its operation model.
\nWestland\u2019s first step in achieving success of its business model is precisely focusing its operational model around only three products. While most distilleries take a broad approach, offering a host of spirits, Seattle’s Westland Distillery prefers to hone in on a very specific target: they make single malt whiskeys.1 Specifically, Westland\u2019s three offering are American Single Malt, Peated Malt, and Sherry Wood whiskeys. Such specificity allows for greater attention to craft quality, as well as ease of scaling.2
\nWestland\u2019s founders, Emerson Lamb and Matthew Hofmann, also crucially recognized that the geographic and climatic qualities found within the Puget Sound region of western Washington were conducive to the production process of single malt whiskey. The Puget Sound region is ideal for two key reasons. First, the proximity to an agricultural region suited to hardy crops, such as the barley used in Westland\u2019s whiskey. Second, the region\u2019s similarity to Scotland by virtue of its cool, temperate, and humid shoreline which sees relatively little overall temperature variation throughout the year, giving the whiskey a unique taste as it ages.3
\nThe raw materials (ingredients) Westland uses in production further establish the distillery as innovative and distinct. First, while most American whiskeys are distilled from corn, rye and wheat, Westland, like old-world single malts, is made exclusively from barley grown in the Skagit Valley of western Washington.4 One of the most important decisions Westland has made within their operation model is to leverage the expertise of the Skagit Valley Malting Co. (SVM). SKM has designed precise, proprietary, (and very tightly-guarded secret) adjustable malt equipment which can customize every phase of the malting process to develop malt from many different grains even if their malting cycle times vary widely, effectively making SKM a uniquely \u201ccustom malt shop\u201d.5 Westland saw the potential of the SVM\u2019s equipment and process and signed contracts with SVM early within Westland\u2019s existence to guarantee small batches of customized malt varietals. This operational relationship allows for unique, artisanal blending of Washington barleys to create such distinct whiskies.
\nTo create their Peated whiskey variant, Westland, like all traditional Scotches, dries malted barley with smoke from fired peat. Unique to American whiskey distilleries, however, Westland built a 6-acre pond exclusively for the harvesting of local Washington peat.\u00a0But Westland\u2019s operational model goes one step further. To ascertain the perfect peat for the barley drying process, Westland uses tractors to dig much deeper into the earth (up to thirty-five feet under the lake). Each level of a peat bog has unique characteristics, including the burn rate, and flavor which the barley (and by extension the whiskey itself) will absorb. Westland blends peat from various levels within the bog to combine the slow-burning, cooler flame of the bottom-level peat with some of the more-flavorful compounds of top-level peat to increase the absorption of smoke, while creating a more dynamic set of aromatics and flavor.6 This process step has never been done before in the United States.
\nOnce the whiskey is actually distilled in Seattle, the final process step is aging. Here again, Westland is innovative and unique. Westland\u2019s whiskey is aged in new American oak barrels. The use of new oak barrels is almost unheard of in Scotland; most scotch is aged in used oak barrels, which allow the spirit to mellow and develop without imparting all that much flavor.7 By instead choosing to age its whiskey in new oak, Westland is creating a scotch imbued with a hint of bourbon in its bouquet. Westland\u2019s whiskey is aged for 27 months in a non-temperature controlled rack house in Hoquiam, WA, allowing the colder and moister air to reduce expensive evaporation and influence the flavors of Westland\u2019s ultimate profile.
\nWestland has become one of the largest and most successful single-malt producers in the country. The unique infusion of ingredients, location, and production processes allows for an effective marrying of business and operation models at Westland Distillery.<\/p>\n
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1 Tobias Carroll, \u201cThe Rise of West Coast Whiskey\u201d, MensJournal.com, November 10, 2015, http:\/\/www.mensjournal.com\/food-drink\/drinks\/the-rise-of-west-coast-whiskey-20151110, accessed December 2015.
\n2 Telephone conversation with Scott Fell, Distillery Manager of Westland Distillery, 07 December 2015.
\n3 J. Ryan Stradal, \u201cMust You Know Scotch Lingo to Enjoy a Single Malt?\u201d, Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2015, http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/must-you-know-scotch-lingo-to-enjoy-a-single-malt-1441293906, accessed December 2015.
\n4 Ronald Holden, \u201cThe best single malt in Seattle? Check Westland Distillery\u201d, Crosscut.com, March 10, 2015, http:\/\/crosscut.com\/2015\/03\/best-single-malt-seattle-check-westland-distillery\/, accessed December 2015.
\n5 Aubrey Laurence, \u201c\u2018Custom\u2019 maltster Skagit Valley Malting Co. producing locally grown malted barley\u201d, Tap Trail, March 18, 2015, http:\/\/www.taptrail.com\/custom-maltster-skagit-valley-malting-co-producing-locally-grown-malted-barley\/, accessed December 2015.
\n6 David Driscoll, \u201cWestland Distillery\u201d, K&L Wine Merchants, August 7, 2015, http:\/\/spiritsjournal.klwines.com\/klwinescom-spirits-blog\/2015\/8\/7\/westland-distillery-day-3-the-building-blocks-of-industry.html, accessed December 2015.
\n7 Zach Gabelle, \u201cThe Bar Code: Westland Distillery Debuts a Delicious Single-Malt Whiskey\u201d, Seattle News Weekly, November 19, 2013, http:\/\/www.seattleweekly.com\/home\/949857-129\/the-bar-code-westland-distillery-debuts, accessed December 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Westland Distillery is boldly creating a truly unique product- an American Single Malt Whiskey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":763,"featured_media":4917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"class_list":["post-4864","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/assignment\/the-tom-challenge-tom-winners-and-losers-assignment\/","yoast_head":"\n