Patty Green Whiskey Distillers

The Patty Green Whiskey Distillers project was born from the disaster of the 2020 harvest in the Willamette Valley. The Labor Day 2020 windstorm caused five simultaneous "megafires" in Oregon, each exceeding 100,000 acres, along with 12 other fires ranging from 112 to 50,951 acres. All of these fires ignited or intensified on September 7 and 8, 2020, and within days, more than 1 million acres had burned. Smoke taint set in and hard decisions had to be made about what to do with tens of thousands of gallons of wine, most of which ranged from being somewhat impacted to so befouled that there was no hope of making even some mildly passable, inexpensive Pinot Noir. What did we choose?

• We made some of our white and rosé wines, as they were less subject to the insidious taint the smoke caused.
• We produced 800 cases of our Willamette Valley Reserve Pinot Noir from the small amount of tonnage we picked before the fires and smoke became all-encompassing in the valley.
• We bottled a lower-end second label Pinot Noir created from the least tainted wines. A bag full of winemaking tricks allowed for that wine to be enjoyable if utterly simple, with no aging capacity at all.
• We paid, in full, all the grower’s we took fruit from which was 19 of the 22. The three we did not take fruit from were all owned by other wineries that knew the situation and were either not picking their own fruit or were able to take on our tonnage into their own winery.
• We met and partnered with an incredibly talented distiller named Lynsee Sardell
• We distilled thousands of gallons of ruined wine into incredibly delicious and supremely textured (this is important) brandy.

Beginning in May of 2021, we started purchasing a variety of heritage strains of barley and rye from small family farms in Oregon. They were malted locally and distilled individually. The individual grain distillates were then combined with small amounts of our brandy to create a hybrid grain and grape whiskey. Distiller Lynsee Sardell likens the addition of the textured and lightly sweet brandy into the single grain whiskeys to the use of corn in bourbon.

The spirits are barrel aged together in repurposed Patricia Green Cellars French oak barrels which have been renewed by ReWine, a local company that removes the layer of neutral oak from the interior of the barrel to expose new oak. These barrels are given a fresh char (#2-4) for whiskey aging. We have also begun to use barrels from Oregon oak made by cooperages here in Oregon specifically for whiskey aging.

The distillery we contracted with to do the distilling is located in Forest Grove, OR (about 14 miles from Patricia Green Cellars) and in 2022 Jim Anderson, Matty Russell and Steve & Cheryl Mozinski, purchased it in conjunction with distiller Lynsee Sardell.

It’s worth highlighting that these whiskeys are 100% Oregon-made. Few other Oregon whiskeys can claim to be crafted entirely within the state, using only Oregon-grown ingredients and local labor. These whiskeys stand as a testament to Oregon’s remarkable ability to produce a diverse range of exceptional products, as well as to a dedicated group of individuals who found a creative solution to a challenging problem, resulting in something truly unique. Enjoy!