The Journal.

New Make Spirit — what is it, and why bottle it?

Most distilleries treat new make as an intermediate. We bottle ours. Here's why it tells you more about a distillery's craft than any finished whisky on the shelf.

If you've taken our distillery tour, you've probably been handed a small glass of clear spirit at the start — and told, slightly to your surprise, that it's "whisky before it knew it was whisky." That spirit is New Make. And the more time we spend explaining it, the more we wish we'd just started bottling it…