Stauning Whisky information

Stauning Whisky is a whisky distillery in Denmark. It is located in the western part of Jutland just south of a small village called Stauning near Skjern. The distillery was founded in May 2005 by nine Danish whisky enthusiasts and is the oldest whisky distillery in the Kingdom of Denmark. The idea was originally to create a whisky resembling the peated whisky produced on the Scottish isle of Islay. The production is done mainly by hand using local grain and water. Everything is produced following the traditional Scottish methods of whisky production. The preparations started in a building owned by one of the nine founders, formerly used as a private slaughter-house. The building was renovated and official permission obtained.^[1]

The first distillation took place in August 2006 and the following months the test production continued with ongoing improvements and streamlining of the process. In the fall of 2006 the nine owners met the whisky expert Jim Murray and presented the new spirit to him for a tasting. Murray was very positive and compared the results to the Ardbeg of the 1970s while recommending the owners to increase production. The chance meeting with Murray became the decision maker for the founders and in 2007 they purchased a small farm and moved the distillery from the private slaughter-house in the village of Stauning, to its current placement approximately 1.5 kilometers south of the village.

In March 2009 production finally restarted. The production was increased to 6-8000 liters of whisky a year, from the 2-400 liters the owners had originally planned for. In March the first grain was malted and in April the distillation started for the first time in the new surroundings.^[1] Since then Stauning Whisky has received the prize for the best European rye whisky below seven years in the Whisky magazine awards, and the best European single malt.^[2] The distillery has also won critical acclaim in Murray's "Whisky Bible", where their Peated 1st Edition received 94 points out of 100. It was described as a "Superstar whisky that give us all a reason to live".^[3]