October 18, 2025, should have been the best day in the history of Westland Distillery. It was, after all, a party. People lined up to purchase a bottle of Garryana American Single Malt, an annual limited-edition release celebrating its 10th year, as well as the first age-statement bottling by the Seattle distillery. It also marked nearly a year since American Single Malt whiskey was officially recognized by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) as a spirits category (or “standard of identity”), a ratification process spearheaded by the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission starting back in 2017, with Westland as a founding member.
But a few weeks before the party, bad news leaked: 40% of the 10th edition Garryana release had been effectively hijacked by a rogue delivery truck, along with shipments of two other Westland products. Overall, nearly a million dollars’ worth of stock was lost.
What happened? And how does a modestly-sized regional distillery recover?
A Brief History of Westland
Westland was founded in 2011 by Matt Hofmann and Emerson Lamb with a clear sense of mission: What does whiskey from the Pacific Northwest taste like?
“We were founded on a couple of core beliefs,” says Master Distiller Tyler Pederson. “One, the raw materials in whiskey had a significant flavor that mattered. The second was that the raw materials, depending on where they grew, were going to have different characteristics, that notion of provenance or terroir. And the third was really kind of combining those things, and that if all the steps are done appropriately, the flavor of those fields and the region can carry through to the final product.”
Everything at Westland (which was sold to Remy Cointreau in 2017) is distilled in Seattle’s SoDo neighborhood and aged about two hours away in the temperate Skagit Valley region. Sustainably-minded, Westland is one of the few Certified B Corp. whiskey distilleries (meaning, they achieved a certification that, among other things, recognizes a company’s high social and environmental performance). And pretty much everything they do is American and, if possible, as local as possible. Even their peated malt is sourced nearby, smoked with a peat moss from a local bog.
Crafted from a 100% malted barley mash bill and fermented with a Belgian Saison brewer’s yeast, Westland’s whiskeys often undergo unique barrel maturations, from ex-sherry to beer casks to, most famously, Garryana oak. The grains are just as unique as the barrels. The distillery estimates they’ve distilled more than 30 different varieties of barley, or “more than the Scotch whisky industry combined in the same period of time,” says Ryan Van Splinter, the marketing director for Westland.
Review: Westland Is Rebuilding American Whiskey From the Ground Up
The Seattle distillery’s new range focuses on never-before-used barrels and grainsIf you’re a bourbon fan and unsure how you’d like Westland, you might want to start with their Flagship bottle. There’s a definite s’mores note there (think toasted marshmallow, a little bit of smoke, graham cracker), partially because the whiskey utilizes six different malts, including a hint of peated barley. But if you’re a whiskey geek, Westland is even more fun — it’s a playground of spirits with never-before-used barrels and grains. (And speaking of play, the distillery is one of the few brands in the world that understands what makes a good April Fool’s joke.)
While a bigger deal in Washington state, Westland has fans around the world, including internationally-renowned bartender Ryan Chetiyawardana (aka Mr Lyan), who helped create a cocktail guide with the Westland team for the Flagship release.
What Is Garryana Oak? And How Is Westland Using It?
Garry Oak, also known as Quercus garryana or Oregon oak, is native to the Pacific Northwest, particularly British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Drought-resistant, the oak is hard to cultivate and only grows in the wild (there are no Garry oak farms). Westland only sources their Garry oak wood from fallen trees.
That said, a little Garry oak goes a long way. “We’re still using the Garryana casks we have,” Van Splinter says. “The oak continues to give. We’re only 10 to 11 years in using that oak, and we’re seeing casks on their third use. Like Mizanura, it’s extremely slow-growing and hard to work with.”
It also gives off a different flavor profile than Mizunara, the aforementioned Japanese oak, which leans more toward sandalwood. “We find the intensity of Garry oak almost unheard of in the world of whiskey,” Pederson says. “It’s clove, it’s molasses, a little faint blueberry syrup, it has zero vanilla flavor and one of the highest tannin concentrations of any oak species.”
Westland’s eighth edition of Garryana Oak was named the third-best whiskey in the world by Whisky Advocate in 2023. While not at any sort of Pappy or Buffalo Trace level of scarcity, the annual release is a collectible and can fetch much more than the $150 retail price after its initial release.
This year’s Garryana release utilized a grain bill of Westland’s Signature Five Malt and Washington Pale Malts. The liquid sat in first- and second-fill Garry oak casks alongside (and after) maturation in ex-Pedro Ximenez, rum and bourbon casks. It’s an exceptional liquid. I tasted through all 10 editions during a recent trip to Seattle, and the 10th is certainly the most nuanced and complex of the series (though I admittedly liked the fifth edition best, which utilizes a heavily peated malt).
“Our master blender Shane [Armstrong] likens Garry oak to Dune, which he tends to reference a lot,” Van Splinter says. “It’s the spice that you really can’t explain but gives life and an indescribable but intense note.”
“We always talk about we’re trying to express a place in our whiskey,” Armstrong tells me later. “And what better way to do that than to use an oak that grows here?”
How Westland’s Whiskey Was Stolen
Because it’s an ongoing investigation, the team at Westland was limited in what they could tell me. According to an investigation by the Seattle Times, 12,000 bottles of Westland’s flagship release, a new release called Watchpost and 3,000 bottles of Garryana were taken in the heist.
Per the paper: “On July 31, sometime before 1 p.m., a man in a freight truck pulled up to the Westland Distillery warehouse in Burlington, where its whiskeys are bottled and stored. The alleged thief showed warehouse workers the appropriate document required to pick up the whiskey, according to the Westland attorney. The 12,000 bottles were then loaded into the freight truck, bound for a warehouse in New Jersey. They never arrived.”
The total loss is an estimated $924,000 in retail value.
“The thieves saw a high commodity and high-ticket item come through a [third-party] logistics company and they said, ‘Oh, we’re gonna jump on it because the insurance on that truck is quite high,’” a Westland rep told me. “They were gonna grab the truck despite not knowing what it was.”
It’s tempting to look at the bright side of this. Westland’s website traffic is at a peak, post-theft. The incident spurned an increase in RSVPs to the distillery’s Garryana 10 launch party. Previous editions of the release saw a spike in sales. And the theft occurred while the distillery already had a documentary in the works.
“People are calling it our Pappygate,” says the rep, noting the 2013 heist of some coveted Pappy Van Winkle that eventually turned into two episodes of a Netflix documentary. “But honestly, it’s really hard for us to talk about because we’ve worked 10 years on this, specifically Shane, on building this product. To have 40% of it stolen was a big hit.”
But the mood on the morning of Oct. 18 was anything but grim. Fans lined up starting at 6 a.m. When Westland Managing Director Jason Moore walked by me, he noted that the distillery had broken its single-day sales record in an hour. The distillery featured an outdoor taco truck, Garry oak art vendors, musicians, tasting tables and even a barrel toasting demonstration (outside, far away from the stills and barrels).
If you want to help Westland and/or just taste some delicious whiskey, Garryana Oak became available nationwide this week in (now extremely) limited amounts. I’d say it’s the type of single malt a fan of certain Scotches, particularly Bruichladdich (which is all about terroir and owned by Remy Cointreau), would appreciate, or even a craft beer drinker who wants to dip their toes into American whiskey that’s not bourbon or rye. Their Flagship makes for an outstanding Old Fashioned, and their more limited, experimental releases should find homes with spirits nerds (like me).
And if you see a bottle of Garryana 10 in the wild at an unbeatable price, maybe shoot the Westland team a note. They’re still looking. “We have no idea what the thieves did with the whiskey,” said the Westland rep. “What we do know is we want the 40% of our Garryana stock back.”
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