Trade
West of Tradition is a new documentary following the people who helped turn American single malt from a collection of individual ambitions into a formally recognised whiskey category.
Seattle’s Westland Distillery provides the central thread, but the film’s scope stretches across the country. It features Whisky Del Bac in Arizona, McCarthy’s in Oregon, Stranahan’s in Colorado, St. George Spirits in California, Cedar Ridge in Iowa, and Virginia Distilling Company in Virginia.
The film has launched on Prime Video, with further platforms to follow. It comes from the team behind The Water of Life – A Whisky Film and Independent Spirits, with Greg Swartz directing and Trevor Jones, Nate Barlow and Joe Vulopas producing.
Their shared starting point is single malt. Where they take it is the interesting bit.
Westward is one of the whiskeys that stars
West of Tradition: now on Amazon Prime
As Swartz explains:
“Whisky has always been a story of place. What interested me was what happens when you take an old idea like single malt and put it in completely different hands and completely different places.”
It’s a good question, particularly for anyone whose mental map of single malt stops at Scotland. A distillery in Arizona has different surroundings, agricultural connections and maturation conditions from one in Seattle. Its makers bring their own tastes and experience, too.
Those differences create choices: which barley to use, which flavours to pursue, which casks to fill and how to work with the climate outside the warehouse door. You can import equipment. You can’t import weather. No matter what Crowded House thinks.
West of Tradition: now on Amazon Prime
West of Tradition follows those connections beyond the still house, into barley fields, forests, breweries, wineries and the warehouses where the whiskey matures. They’re working with an established idea, but without a settled American single malt tradition telling them precisely how their whiskey ought to taste.
Swartz describes the uncertainty facing these producers as central to the film. There was room to experiment, and plenty to work out. Producer Trevor Jones puts it this way:
“American single malt isn’t really one story. It’s a collection of people in very different parts of the country who arrived at a similar idea, then took it in completely different directions.”
Federal recognition was an important step. Following years of work by producers, the final rule establishing American single malt whiskey as a distinct category was published in December 2024, taking effect in January 2025. The whiskey already existed, of course. Governments are always last.
More than one story
For drinkers, the appeal lies in exploring what sits beneath that name. A category can help explain what a whiskey is while leaving plenty of room for the person making it to surprise you. Here, that means following the connections between grain, wood, climate and the decisions made at individual distilleries.
Barlow says the human side became more significant as production progressed:
“We started with whiskey, but the deeper we went, the more this became a film about people building something without knowing exactly where it would lead.”
It’s a compelling premise. West of Tradition has a subject beyond the familiar pleasures of copper stills and handsome warehouses. Building a distillery involves making expensive decisions whose results may spend years in a cask before anyone can properly judge them. Building a category means persuading other people that those decisions add up to something worth understanding.
West of Tradition follows the people who took that on. If your American whiskey exploration has mostly involved bourbon and rye, it offers a few more names to put on the tasting list.
