Stauning Danish Whisky

NEW NORDIC WHISKY FROM THE WEST COAST OF DENMARK

Big skies, moorland and 200 kilometres of shifting dunes

A remote village on the West Coast of Denmark, nine friends (a doctor, a chef, a butcher, a teacher, a helicopter pilot and four engineers), two small pot stills and an old butchery. 

The founders of Stauning Whisky didn't have much when they started out in 2005. Least of all, any knowledge of whisky-making, but they shared passion, curiosity and the will to experiment and create.

However, they had the land around them: The wind, the sea, the fields, the heather and the peat. And some of Denmark's finest water. What could possibly go wrong?

Sometimes, having less is more than enough

Having next to nothing, the nine friends had to find their own ways to achieve their vision: A 100% Danish whisky, one which reflected the place and could stand comparison to the finest from around the world.

The spirit dribbled into the small bottles, and a New Nordic Whisky was born.

“We had to make our whisky with what grew around us,” says Lasse, one of the founders. “The same applied to the engineering. We just used and adapted what was lying around, saw what we could replicate from a normal distillery, and then fine-tune”.

And so they did. The barley, they got from a local farmer. Malting was done on the tiled floor of the butcher's cold room. In a nearby museum, they found the peat to dry and smoke the malted barley. Milling could be done in an old meat mincer.

And then finally, one late August night in 2006, the first drops of the second distillation - the hearts - came through. “We felt like pioneers setting out for a new world,” Alex, one of the founders tells.

The Danish whisky distillery Stauning combines the traditional art of distilling with a great deal of inventive talent. Their whiskies, made from grain that is malted in a floor malting process, are as individual as the prehistory of the distillery founders. Being all non-whisky-professionals before, they have successfully realized the dream of being Danish self-made distillery operators.

Stauning whisky is now internationally recognized meanwhile. “It captures the smell of the land, the dunes, the heather and the wind. A whisky that reflects the place: open, wild, relaxed, pure,” enthuses whisky author Dave Broom.

With three different products, Stauning has an impressive core range to offer: Stauning Rye, Smoke and Kaos are the names of the whiskies, which are presented in a stylish new design and now in 0.7-liter bottles. These whiskies are produced in small batches that are named on the label. All Stauning Whiskies are bottled uncolored and unchill filtered.

The Danish artist Asbjørn Staunstrup Lund is responsible for the elaborate illustrations on the new Stauning bottles. They tell the story of the distillery and are impressively printed off on the matt, black coating of the bottles.