About
Courage & Conviction American single malt. Scottish heritage approach in Virginia Blue Ridge. Forsyths copper pot stills. Cuvee, Bourbon, and Sherry cask expressions. TEKEL stills from closed Turkish distillery. WWA Best American Single Malt.
Production Details
The Virginia Distillery Company Tale
In the rolling hills of Lovingston, where Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains catch morning mist like a cupped hand, the Virginia Distillery Company rises from red clay soil that has nurtured spirits for centuries. Here, in 2015, something distinctly American began taking shape—a bridge between Scotland's ancient craft and Virginia's own whisky heritage.
The founders looked east across the Atlantic, then turned to the springs flowing down from these ancient peaks. Blue Ridge Mountain water, filtered through granite and limestone for millennia, would carry their vision. This wasn't imitation but translation—Scottish methods speaking in a Virginia accent.
Inside the stillhouse, two copper pot stills from Forsyths of Rothes gleam like burnished sentinels, their swan necks reaching toward timber rafters. But beside them stands something rarer: TEKEL stills, rescued from a closed Turkish distillery and given new purpose in these Virginia hills. It's the kind of practical resurrection that defines American craft—waste nothing, honor everything.
The mash tuns fill with American barley, some grown in Virginia soil that once knew tobacco and corn. Steam rises as Scottish techniques meet Blue Ridge terroir, creating something neither purely Highland nor purely Appalachian, but entirely honest to this place.
The warehouses breathe with Virginia's humid summers and sharp winters, seasons that push whisky through oak with a rhythm different from Scotland's steady cool. Bourbon barrels mingle with sherry casks, the wood telling stories of Kentucky corn and Spanish solera, while the spirit inside grows into something recognizably American.
This is the new American single malt movement in microcosm—respectful of tradition but unafraid to be itself. The World Whiskies Awards recognized what these hills already knew, naming their Courage & Conviction the world's best American single malt.
From the stillhouse windows, the Blue Ridge stretches toward horizons that have watched Virginia spirits evolve from colonial rye to modern innovation. The mountains remain, the springs flow clear, and in copper and oak, another chapter of American whisky writes itself in patient amber sentences, one day at a time.