High Coast is a Swedish distillery that we’re big fans of here at MoM Towers, which is why it featured in this delightful blog post! Initially the Scandanvian spirit producers made Box Single Malt Whisky, however the brand name Box Destilleri (inspired by the distillery’s location in a former wooden box factory power plant) was changed to High Coast (or Höga Kasten, the region of Sweden it calls home) due to “a small conflict with another company that had Box in the name”. No prizes for guessing who.
Distillation first began back in November 2010 in two pot stills and three washbacks which could produce about 90,000 litres of pure alcohol per year. The capacity has since increased to about 350,000 litres, with current production sitting at around 200,000 litres. Distillation occurs seven days a week creating two new-make recipes: unpeated and heavily peated, and distillery manager Roger Melander claims that High Coast makes more than 1,000 different products every year. That’s a lot of tasty tipples.
High Coast has an interesting maturation environment as its location in northern Sweden, around 500km north of Stockholm, has little similarity to any other whisky region in the world. It’s common for temperatures to range from -30 degrees celsius in the winter to +30 degrees or higher in the height of summer. The Swedish distillers also have access to a particularly sublime source of charcoal and sand-filtered water from Bålsjön, a spring lake northeast of Kramfors.