Woodinville Whiskey Co.

Woodinville Whiskey Co. is the suburban Seattle craft American whiskey operation founded in 2010 by childhood friends Orlin Sorensen and Brett Carlile — two former commercial pilots who left their flying careers to pursue craft distilling — and the brand that, in July 2017, became LVMH's Moët Hennessy division's first-ever American whiskey acquisition. Located at 14509 Woodinville-Redmond Road in the city of Woodinville (the suburban-Seattle wine-country town northeast of Lake Washington that's become Washington State's wine industry's primary commercial hub), Woodinville Whiskey operates the distillery and visitor experience at the Woodinville flagship location, with the brand's barrel-aging warehouses located 150+ miles east in Quincy, Washington — a deliberate climate decision to expose aging barrels to the dramatic hot summer / cold winter temperature swings of Eastern Washington's high-desert climate (which more closely mimics Kentucky aging conditions than the milder, wetter Western Washington maritime climate). The Quincy warehouse strategy is the brand's most distinctive technical hook. Most Washington-based distilleries age in or near their Western Washington production locations, where the temperate Puget Sound climate produces slow, steady aging with minimal annual temperature swing. Woodinville's Quincy aging exposes barrels to summer highs above 100°F and winter lows below freezing — the same dramatic seasonal cycling that drives accelerated wood-spirit interact…