Woven craft blends from Edinburgh

Duncan McRae, Peter Allison, Nick Ravenhall, Ed Harvey-Jamieson and Alastair Fiddes provide experiences.

The friends and alumni of some of the biggest players in the drinks industry turned their backs on strict industrial corsets, mass production and conventions to make woven whisky a new experience. In the form of first-class blended Scotch whiskies. Because: By combining their individual strengths, single malt and grain whiskies unfold unimagined dimensions of taste .

From the creatively hip district of Leith, Edinburgh's former "whisky district" , Woven works by hand to push the boundaries of the blend category.

This becomes clear when you look at the first bottlings released at the end of 2021. The minimalist, apothecary-style bottles have nothing to do with Scotch standards .

The simple labels reveal the name of the whisky, a few hints about its character, but not much more. Even blended whisky is rarely seen in such a reduced form. This draws attention - and achieves exactly the desired effect: discovering what whisky can be.

Anyone who wants to know what one of the Woven bottlings tastes like is uninfluenced by stories, image or age invited to taste. The bases for their blended Scotch whiskies come from exceptional barrels and are between five and 42 years old. For the young brand, however, the only thing that counts in the “blending room” is the taste experience . The friends have tasted their whiskies accordingly. “Experience” baptized.

The whisky experiences (in the future not only Scottish) are unique. They are created using a mixture of traditional, partly lost and new, innovative techniques or those that Woven adopts from related industries, particularly cognac and bourbon production. For example, the team reduces the whisky in small steps to bottling strength, similar to cognac, in order to maintain its integrity. The "experiences" are also unaffected by chill filtration and coloring.

Take a look at the Woven