Region & History

Steve McCarthy set up his first still in Portland in 1985, distilling brandy from pears grown on his own farm. American Single Malt wasn't even a term back then. His Clear Creek Distillery is now considered one of the country's first craft distilleries.

The distillery no longer stands at that original site. In 2014, Hood River Distillers bought the company and moved operations to the Columbia River, sixty miles east of Portland. Anyone looking for the old Portland address won't find any barrels there anymore, just the story of a pioneer.

A quarter century after McCarthy, the next generation arrived. Matt Hofmann and Emerson Lamb founded Westland Distillery in Seattle's SoDo industrial district in 2010. Starting in June 2011, they distilled their first barrels.

Their goal was a whiskey that tasted like the region, not like Scotland. In 2017, French spirits giant Rémy Cointreau bought into this vision.

Shortly after, Copperworks emerged on Seattle's waterfront. The name comes from the copper stills built specifically for malt whiskey. In 2018, the American Distilling Institute named the young distillery Distillery of the Year, a sign of how quickly the city's scene was maturing.

In Portland, Christian Krogstad and Thomas Mooney founded their own distillery in 2004, now operating as Westward Whiskey. But the biggest turning point in this young history didn't come from a single founder, it came from federal law. Since January 19, 2025, the US Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) has for the first time defined what can be called American Single Malt Whisky. Distilleries like Westland, Copperworks, and Westward had pushed for exactly this rule for years.