Country: USA - Virginia - Lovingston
Distillery: Virginia Distillery Co
Type: Single Malt
Age: 3
Cask: Bourbon & Cuvée Wine (STR) & Sherry
ABV: 46%
Proof: 92
Price: $77

Nose: Initial beewax notes create joyous marriage with stone fruits. Ripe pears, vanilla, toasted oak and cherries become pronounced after a few minutes.  White flowers take the scene with more time.

Palate: Great malty feeling with creamy texture. Apricots appear first. Crema Catalana feeling appears with the notes of candied orange. A small touch of pepper arise with coffee beans.

Finish: Finish is warm but definitely not overwhelming. Pretty soft and velvety with notes of cocoa and candied ginger.

After a long long wait, I finally received a bottle of Courage & Conviction.
This bottle has a different meaning to me.

As you might well know, I am from Turkey and I moved to the US a little bit more than three years. Though, my passion for whisky has roots in Turkey, I started to work full time in whisky business back in Istanbul. Everything was perfect then... Only one thing was missing. A working Turkish whisky distillery. Unfortunately, the one and only whisky distillery in Turkey which was in my home town, Ankara, was mothballed in 2000’s and permanently closed  after Diageo bought the Turkish company who owned the distillery in 2011.

However, life is nothing without hope! A few years later we learned that Virginia Distillery bought the stills from Ankara and brought them all the way to Virginia. The stills gave birth to another single malt, this time an American single malt, Courage & Conviction!

This is the flagship bottle of Courage & Conviction, which takes the name quoting the late Dr. George G. Moore who started Virginia Distillery Company. His words were, “Have the courage of your convictions.”

This bottles is composed of three casks, 50% Bourbon barrels, 25% Sherry casks and 25% Cuvée wine casks. The Cuvée casks were developed by the late Dr. Jim Swan. Recently I have also reviewed another single malt brand from Israel which used STR casks developed by Dr. Swan.

For more information, I will encourage you to visit Batch.info which is the best description with the highest transparency level I have ever seen in my life!

For a 3 year old whisky, this expression of Courage & Conviction is incredible. However, I will keep my love a little bit muted, since I tasted their future Cuvêe Cask expression's 'in progress' phase. I can honestly tell than, when the cask expressions for Courage & Conviction hit the market, they will change the American single malt culture.