Virginia Distillery Courage & Conviction Single Malt Review

By Richard Thomas

Rating: B

Located in the Appalachian foothills of Virginia, not all that far from Charlottesville, Virginia Distillery made its initial reputation for skillfully created hybrid whiskies: they blended their youthful in-house American single malts with imported Scottish malts, and then gave the hybrid a “marriage” (secondary finishing) in used-but-native Virginia casks. An example is their Cider Cask vatted malt.

Starting in 2019, the distillery began to release versions of their in-house malt, leaving the Scotch out of the picture. They named the line “Courage & Conviction,” and the standard bearer for the line (indeed, now for the entire distillery) is the simply named Courage & Conviction American Single Malt. They draw on three cask stocks of whiskey to make this core expression: approximately 50% ex-bourbon barrels, 25% Sherry casks and 25% Cuvee casks. Each of these casks has an expression all its own in the series, and Virginia Distillery seems especially proud of the Cuvee casks, seeing as how those were pioneered by their consultant, the late Dr. Jim Swan. In keeping with the regulations governing Scotch (and thus much of world whisky, which follows that model), Courage & Conviction is aged for a minimum of three years. It is bottled at 92 proof (46% ABV).

The Whiskey
A pour of this whisky has the coloring of a blonde lager; if you let it sit in the glass, it looks kind of like Miller High Life without the fizz in it. The scent of that pour has a foundation of toasted cereals, layered with bundles of dried clover, fresh cut lavender and a single overripe apricot. A sip reveals a rich, malty whiskey, with honeyed cereals leading the way. A boozy fruit cake that went heavy on raisins follows, only to be subsumed in turn by a wave of dry, peppery wood. The finish follows in that vein, but is a light short one, so I think of it as being more of a sliver of that dry, peppery oak.

The Price
Expect to pay between $75 and $85 a bottle.