Woodinville Whiskeymaker Has Big Plans

Scotchy scotch scotch, down into my belly.
Most of the new Seattle-area microdistilleries I talk to don’t have a PR rep, or a marketing team developing their label, but Orlin Sorensen and Brett Carlile of Puget Sound Distilling Company have big plans—and, it would seem, the requisite finances to put them in action.
Their Woodinville-based distillery and tasting room will open in mid-June on Woodinville-Redmond Road, near the Tefft Cellars tasting room. There they will produce an organic vodka plus three types of whiskey: a bourbon, a single-malt scotch, and a third whiskey made from 100-percent Washington ingredients.
Distilling these, says Sorensen, will be one of the top whiskey distillers in the world. Who is it? He says he is contractually obligated to keep that under wraps for the moment. So we’ll leave that alone. Here’s what he did say: The company has purchased a still made from hand-hammered copper in Germany and other top-of-the-line equipment that is much more "technically advanced" than what we’ve seen so far around these parts. He hopes the products will be available in liquor stores as early as this summer, and eventually hopes to distribute nationwide.
Sorensen told me he and Carlile chose a Woodinville location after years of accompanying their wives on winery tours and tasting trips in the area. Why not create something in Woodinville that would appeal to people like them, who weren’t interested in wine? "I thought of it as a built-in destination" says Sorensen. He gave a nod to the "great products and people" over at Soft Tail, but, he added, "we plan to be much bigger than that."
Look for more news about Puget Sound—including the name of that famous distiller—in weeks to come.