Shane Fraser

"Perfection in a spirit is to do things very consistently and don't change things. I'm certainly not perfect, but I think what we're doing at the distillery is close to the best whisky I've made for a long, long time. It's grain to glass, and it's all grown and made in New York State." – Shane Fraser

Tenmile Distillery in Wassaic, NY is making the closest thing to Scotch outside of Scotland, thanks to their secret weapon, the acclaimed master distiller Shane Fraser from Aberdeen. Tenmile's focus is on American Single Malt Whisky, a relatively unheard-of and misunderstood category only officially defined as recently as 2025. 

In this episode with whisk(e)y expert James Pellingra, Shane describes the ins and outs of producing single malt whisky, the advantages of aging whisky in California Pinot Noir casks, and how he defines perfection in a category still establishing its identity.

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Transcript

Introduction

Shane Fraser 0:03

Perfection in the spirit is to do things very consistent and don't change things. I'm certainly not perfect, but I think what we're doing at the distillery is close to the best whiskey I've made for a long, long time. It's grain to glass, and it's all grown and made in New York State.

Harmon Skurnik 0:22

Hey, this is Harmon Skurnik, and welcome to another episode of Skurnik Unfiltered. Today I have with me the whisk(e)y portfolio manager for Skurnik Wines & Spirts, the illustrious James Pellingra, the expert, I'd say, in all things whisk(e)y, whether it be from these coasts or from Europe or Japan or anywhere. Today we are staying close to home, talking about Tenmile Distillery, which is located here in New York, in Wassaic. And you know what's funny? I never heard of Wassaic until last year when my nephew got married. And he got married where? In Wassaic.

James Pellingra 1:02

Oh, beautiful.

Harmon Skurnik 1:03

It was the last stop on the Metro North train line, so it's really kind of in the middle of nowhere. But this distillery is owned by John Dyson, who has been in the wine and spirits world for some time, right?

James Pellingra 1:17

Correct. Selyem Wines.

Harmon Skurnik 1:19

Williams Selyem.

James Pellingra 1:20

Yes.

Harmon Skurnik 1:20

He bought Williams Selyem many years ago. You know, Williams Selyem was one of the original six wineries that Skurnik Wines began our business with.

James Pellingra 1:29

Yeah, when we first approached them and had the initial conversations, obviously the Dyson family was very enthusiastic about working with the Skurnik family, primarily due to your previous history many years ago. It's one of the foundations and building blocks of what we now know as Skurnik Wines & Spirits, so rekindling that relationship was a big priority of myself and Gaby's when we first approached them. All very exciting.

Harmon Skurnik 1:52

Very cool. He also owns Millbrook Winery.

James Pellingra 1:55

Correct, yes.

Harmon Skurnik 1:56

Which is a New York state winery, known for good quality wines as well. What made him get into the whisky business?

James Pellingra 2:03

It was a family venture, a passion project by his son-in-law Joel and his daughter Eliza. Specifically, Joel has a fondness and love of whisk(e)y in general, not just whiskey, but Scotch and Japanese whisky. We hosted Shane here, the current master distiller and original one, who they swayed away from one of our other partners, Wolfburn. He was previously with Oban and Glenfarclas, some of the most prestigious distilleries in all of Scotland. It's a very impressive resume and drawn towards the American market to not only establish what we now know as American Single Malt, but to bring his techniques and philosophy and and methodology from Scotland to the US market and really put what we now know as American Single Malt on the map. I mean, if you look at what we see, or previously saw, in that category for many years, it was kind of all over the place. There was no definition of what that category was. And finally, last year in May—

Harmon Skurnik 3:02

Only last year?

James Pellingra 3:03

Only last year! It was a fight for many years amongst a lot of really great distilleries in the United States to get that category approved and recognized with specific guidelines.

Harmon Skurnik 3:13

And Shane or John and/or both were involved.

James Pellingra 3:17

Everyone, yeah. I mean, across the United States, with some of our other distilleries as well within the portfolio, everybody chipping in and really fighting to create a clear category of what that is. And they're at the forefront, obviously, and producing now for, I think we're coming up on seven years.

Harmon Skurnik 3:35

And the concept of American Single Malt Whisky is that, for lack of a better term, in the Scotch style of whisky?

James Pellingra 3:42

Yes. There have been a lot of hybrids and people blending different grains together and things of that nature and calling it an American Single Malt or American Whisky, but there have been no set guidelines as far as cask finishing and age statements and where you can source your barley from, things of that nature. And finally, that was all established last year, which is wonderful. So when we first decided—aka the whisk(e)y portfolio at Skurnik Wines & Spirits—to get into the American Single Malt category in a meaningful way, we wanted to make sure we found the right partner, first and foremost. Somebody that was doing it in a very traditional manner, akin to what was coming out of Scotland at the time or has been, and also somebody that is close enough for our team to get involved with. The category takes a lot of education, it's a lot of consumer/customer education and staff education for our team, so having somebody in our own backyard was really the shining point that got this thing through.

Shane's path from Scotland to New York

Harmon Skurnik 4:42

And they're aiming for a very high quality product. I remember when we first tasted them. I was just blown away by the quality. I mean, they did resemble quality Scotch. The guy has spent a lot of years distilling whisky in Scotland, so that would make sense. But rather than talk too much about what's about to be discussed, why don't we go to your interview with Shane Fraser, the master distiller of Tenmile Distillery.

James Pellingra 5:09

Today I'm here with Shane Fraser of Tenmile Distilling up in Wassaic, New York. We're very excited to have Shane with us here today to discuss his history, the history of the distillery, their distillation processes, and where they're going in the future. This is a new world in American Single Malt, and we're all very excited to be with this groundbreaking distillery within our own backyard here in New York. I'll let Shane take it from here if he'd like to give us a little bit of background information on where he came from.

Shane Fraser 5:39

Yeah, thank you. Great introduction. Brilliant. I've been making whiskey for about 35 years. I started as a tour guide at Royal Lochnagar Distillery in 1990. That was my start into the industry. And then I was lucky enough to be offered a job in the actual distillery, so I just learned from the ground up basically; learning to repair casks and then filling casks, stuff like that. And then I worked into the shift operation, doing the mashing, the distilling, along with learning all the arts and crafts—a great grounding for working my way up. I was there for 14 years, 1990 to 2004. I then moved to Oban distillery on the West Coast for a couple of years, where I just made Oban whisky for a couple of years there. Really interesting. Gave me a better perspective of the world after being at one distillery. I thought I'd better go and move about and see what I can do. And then I was lucky enough to get the production manager's job at the Glenfarclas, which was an eye-opener to the bigger industry. I felt that when you're with Diageo, you are Diageo and that's it. At Glenfarclas, the owners, John Grant, were very good at introducing me to different people in the industry and just showing me what exactly goes on there. It was really good, and also it's a brilliant whiskey. I was there for 2007 to 2012, which was a great experience. I then moved to Wolfburn, which was a new start distillery up in Thurso, which is to the very north of Scotland. If you go any further, you fall into the North Sea. It's pretty remote, but we got it all commissioned and we made a lovely spirit there, which became a really good award winning whisky. And then in 2018, an advert came up on Indeed. I applied for a role and the job came up for Tenmile. I sent in my CV with a cover letter, and the owner, John Dyson, wrote back to me and invited me over to have a look around the distillery and discuss what they wanted for the whiskey and what my ideas were. We were very much aligned on what kind of spirit we wanted. We wanted a light, fruity-charactered spirit.

James Pellingra 7:55

I've been to a lot of distilleries throughout the country and around the world and whatnot. Yours is very unique, it does not look like your standard American distillery. They're usually very industrial looking. This looks like you're going into somebody's home. And you did something that nobody else really does: you put your stills and your production facility right in the middle of an event space.

Sourcing, fermenting, and distilling

Shane Fraser 8:19

Yeah, we have to thank our owner, John Dyson, for that. He had the great idea of putting the stills in the big grand hall so that people could see it as they walked in. We put a big glass surrounding around it, so it basically looked like a jewelry box, really. Shiny copper that everybody could see and be wowed by when they come in. And then we put the mashing and stuff in the back. And you're right, you would never know it's a distillery until you walked in the door.

James Pellingra 8:44

As far as production goes, your water source, I think that's pretty amazing.

Shane Fraser 8:47

Yeah, it comes out of the well. We use that for production and everything else, cooling and stuff like that.

James Pellingra 8:53

Let's talk about your grain sources a little bit.

Shane Fraser 8:56

Yeah, all of our grain is grown in New York State from about 30 miles away in Tivoli all the way up to near Rochester. But the amount of malted barley that's grown in New York State is tiny. We use about 200,000 pounds a year of malted barley. Some distilleries in Scotland use that in a week. So we're small, but big for New York, I would say. We're doing 8,000 pounds a week.

James Pellingra 9:25

When it comes to American Single Malt, at least in New York State, you're easily the largest producer. I know we have some other folks doing it, but it's on a much smaller production level. They're also making bourbon and other things alongside of it. It's more of a side project.

Shane Fraser 9:39

Going back to the barley, we started with spring barley, but we've found going forward that the winter barley grows better and gives us better results, speaking as a distiller, efficiency-wise. We're getting more spirit out of the barley.

James Pellingra 9:54

Would you mind taking us through a normal production run?

Shane Fraser 9:58

Yeah, sure. We start with mashing 2,000 pounds of malted barley. We mix that with hot water—I'm going to be in Celsius here, so I'll apologize because I'm from Scotland—about 66ºC. We mix the hot water and the malted barley. Then at that temperature and a correct mix—it can't be too thick, it can't be too thin—it mixes in our mashing machine above the mash tun, and you get a kind of slurry porridge mixture, which, almost instantaneously, you get the conversion from starch to sugar. The more starch in the barley, the more sugar you get, the more alcohol you should get at the end of the day. That's the first process. It goes into the mash tun, we allow it to settle, and in the mash tun is a false floor, so the grain stays behind, which is probably not what they do in America. They probably put all the grains through. We keep the grain behind and separate out the sugary warts, or the sugary water. It's quite hot, so we then cool it down through a plate heat exchanger. We cool the warts down to about 12-13ºC, about 55ºF, roughly, if I can think about that. We cool it down because we need to add yeast. If you add yeast to hot water, it'll die, so we want the water as cold as possible to go into our fermentation tanks. We start pumping the first water for about an hour and a half. The level in the mash then starts dropping, so we add a second water, which is slightly lower in volume but higher in temperature. We go from 66ºC up to about 80ºC, which is pretty damn hot. It starts washing out more of the sugars that are left in the grain, and that, along with the first water, get all pumped into the fermentation tank. We actually do a third water in the mash tun as well, and it's about 82ºC. And because I'm a Scotsman and barley is very expensive here, we want to extract everything out of the barley that we can, and that third water is used for the first water of the next mash, so we've got a little bit of a head start. It's exactly what we did in Scotland. Actually, going back many, many years, they used to do a fourth water in Scotland. That's how stingy we are.

James Pellingra 12:12

Just out of curiosity, are you using proprietary yeast or is that an industry standard yeast?

Shane Fraser 12:19

It's an industry standard yeast. We're using Lalamand Malt Whiskey Yeast, which I used at Wolfburn. I knew what kind of character I would get with it as well. We didn't want to play about with that side of things. And it gives us very good results. This is where it changes slightly from America's well: we're doing very, very long fermentations, almost twice or three times the length of time you do in Scotland. If we mash on a Monday, we don't distill until the following Monday.

James Pellingra 12:44

Wow. That is so long.

Shane Fraser 12:46

You're getting your initial fermentation conversion from sugar to alcohol with the yeast, converting a bit of heat and some carbon dioxide. But then you get your secondary fermentations where you're getting all that nice fruity flavour that come through in our spirit. We do the distilling very slowly. This is so we get more copper contact in the still. The copper acts as a catalyst and gets rid of a lot of heavy compounds like sulfur and stuff like that. We have quite a long spirit run. It comes on around about 75-76%, and we run it down to about 61, 62. What's left in there is hot liquid, so what we do is we transfer that into a tank that's just next to the still, a hot effluent tank, and we use that for preheating the next batch the next day, so we're saving energy that way. It's done by heat exchanger as well, but it's basically the reverse of the water cooler. At the end of the day, we just open up the stills, give them a hose out, and leave them to breathe. It's called an air rest. You allow the air to go into the copper, and it allows the copper to then rejuvenate and it's ready to go again. That's how we keep our quality: the copper's always fresh.

Sinpatch Vodka and Listening Rock Gin

James Pellingra 13:56

And you only run at certain times of the year, correct?

Shane Fraser 13:59

Yeah, we do our malt whiskey from, say, January to the end of April, maybe May, and then we don't start up till like September, October again, because in the hot months, it's really hard to control the fermentations, for a start because it gets well over 100ºF in the distillery if you're distilling, and also you lose alcohol that way. So, during the the warmer months, we make our neutral grain spirit for our vodka, and we also make our gin as well. We do a lot of small batches to get what we have in our listening rock gin. The ingredients in our gin are orange peel, orris root, angelica root, juniper, lemon balm, mint, orange peel. So there's a lot of different things.

James Pellingra 14:40

The mint really shines through in your gin.

Shane Fraser 14:42

It does, yeah. And it's just a small portion of what we put in. And the lemon balm and the mint are grown in our garden at the distillery.

James Pellingra 14:50

Beautiful.

Shane Fraser 14:51

Yeah, we've got a few juniper trees, but they're not mature yet to actually use them.

James Pellingra 14:55

I'm excited for our spirit specialists and our team members to start making some cocktails with that. It's a very unique gin that, like I said, the mint really shines through. Maybe not your typical, standard style gin for your typical gin recipes, but you can have a lot of fun with it.

Shane Fraser 15:12

Yeah, even the bartenders at the distillery are making lots of weird and wonderful cocktails with it, which is great. And we find that people who don't really like that kind of piney, juniper-based gin really like ours because there are a lot of floral notes to it and stuff like that that come through. People keep asking me if I put lavender in it. It's like, No, I think it's just the mix of the different botanics seem to bring that out in it, but it's really nice.

James Pellingra 15:39

Yeah, and most people never think about Scotch and Scotland and gin production, but there is a lot of gin production in Scotland.

Aging in California Pinot Noir casks

Shane Fraser 15:46

Oh, yeah.

James Pellingra 15:48

Now we've got your whisky distillate in a tank. Where does it go from there? You guys do some special things.

Shane Fraser 15:54

Yeah, it comes off the still at an average of about 70% ABV. So we reduce that down to 61% ABV by just adding water that we use for the mashing and everything. We then take it up to our cask warehouse and we then fill our casks. We're lucky enough that our owner, John Dyson, has a winery out in California called Williams Selyem, and they're a high-end Pinot Noir winery, and we get these lovely French oak casks once they've been used for the Pinot Noir. I was a bit nervous at the start when they said we wanted to use wine casks, because back in Scotland, you get the ones from France, which are very heavy, and you sometimes get a lot of crystallization in the casks. But the ones from the winery in California are not that type of wine that's been in them, so the casts are very lightly toasted, and they've had a bit of—I don't know how long the wine sits in it, four or five years? So you're getting almost a new cask, but it's been seasoned with some wine, I would call it, and then you're getting that lovely—when the spirit comes out, it's insanely good. It's almost like a fresh sherry cask, nearly, but it's wine instead.

James Pellingra 17:02

When I first spoke about this project to the Skurniks, they were very excited because of their history with Selyem wines here many, many years ago. And being in your rick, in your warehouse, and seeing those casks, it was a pretty magical moment going through and thinking about that history.

Shane Fraser 17:21

Yeah, the casks are excellent. They pay a fortune for them, and we get them for a third or a quarter of the price, once we buy them a back from them. It gives us wonderful results.

James Pellingra 17:33

When you're receiving the barrels, how much is leftover? Is there any leftover wine in there?

Shane Fraser 17:37

No, they're called "wet casks," but they come from California, so they're shipped over. And we try and fill them as soon as possible so that they don't dry out. I don't think they've even been washed out, they've just been emptied. They ask if I want sulfur, and I was like, Absolutely not.

James Pellingra 17:53

I know a lot of rum producers, Scotch producers overseas, when they're pulling casks from American distilleries, ex-bourbon casks, things like that, they always ask, Can you leave a little extra juice in there to keep it wet as it goes overseas?

Shane Fraser 18:07

Well, that's the thing. We buy sherry casks direct from Spain as well, so they always have a gallon or so of sherry in there to keep them damp on the way over. I don't bother emptying out, I just leave it in.

James Pellingra 18:20

Yeah, let it rock and roll. Now when you put your new make into the Pinot cask, is it always initially going into a Pinot Noir cask?

Shane Fraser 18:28

Yeah, we'll fill probably an equal amount of Pinot casks and ex-bourbon casks. They're usually 50-50 split. And then we'll fill some sherry casks probably every second year, and we've done some rum casks, we've done some Chardonnay casks, we've done some port casks. Initially it's fully matured in all of them, but some of the expressions we've done, we've done a bit of experimentation with finishing or double matured or whatever you want to call it. Our first experiment with that was with some very small bourbon barrels and emptied them out and put them into a first fill sherry butt. That was our first double matured one, and it yeah, it just flew off the shelf. It was just like, This is insane. I was fortunate enough to try that. It's exceptional. For the age of it, and being cast strength as well, it was just like, Wow. We think we've cracked it because we've got a perfect new make, I guess, and we've got brilliant casks, so we just keep everything going the same.

James Pellingra 19:31

Yeah. I know you're releasing a little bit older every single year. I think you're up to what, about five-year-old?

Shane Fraser 19:38

Five-year-old now, yeah.

James Pellingra 19:39

Is there a certain age that you're aiming for?

Shane Fraser 19:42

I wish I had a crystal ball. I wouldn't be working about a crystal ball. Ha! Personally, I think anything between eight and twelve years will be where our sweet spot is, because our new make is very, very gentle. I think if it got any older now, I think the wood would start to take it over. I think, but I don't know.

James Pellingra 20:06

Yeah, you never quite know. We see so many American whiskies coming out now, the past 15 years, 20 years plus sometimes, and they're just tannin bombs. It tastes like you're drinking wood chips.

Shane Fraser 20:19

Yes, chewing a table.

Little Rest 'Classic' and 'Export Cask' American Single Malt Whiskies

James Pellingra 20:20

Yeah, precisely. Obviously, if you're putting out such a delicate and beautiful new make, you don't want it to lean that way. You want the vibrancy and the fruit to shine through consistently throughout all the aging process. Now, you have a couple core products, obviously the vodka and the gin, which you touched based on, but could you take us through your two core main single malts?

Shane Fraser 20:44

Yeah, absolutely. We've got the Classic, which is marriage between the Pinot Noir casks and the Bourbon casks, exactly split down the middle 50-50. We started with a three-year-old way back in 2023. Time's flying by. We did that, and then we did the four-year-old, and now we're on to the five-year-old. So probably in the fall we'll be doing the six-year-old. Because we've got a core group of people who buy our whisky all the time, they're getting to see the story from the new make to the three-year-old to the four-year-old to the five-year-old, so it's a really good balance. And you've got all the fruity notes coming from the wine casks, and then you've got like that nice balance from the bourbon, a bit of vanilla and stuff like that. It's very, very palatable for a five-year-old whiskey. People say, No way it's just five years old. It tastes more like an eight to ten-year-old. But I think that's just because the spirit was so gentle when it went into the casks. And then the second expression that you're taking from us is the Export Cask. It's slightly different. It's eighty percent bourbon barrels and twenty percent sherry casks, so all Oloroso Sherry casks. They've matured really well. For sherry casks, slightly smaller, you're getting a bit more spirit to wood ratio, so it does mature slightly quicker. And then just an American standard barrel going into that as well. We allow that to marry together for a wee while because of the sherry notes, maybe set it for a month or so before we actually bottle it just to allow everything to kind of balance out a bit, and it's excellent as well. It's kind of our hit on a Speyside, maybe, or Macallan or a Glenmorangie kind of expression. They all do it in Scotland, a bit of sherry and a lot of bourbon casks. It's been very well received.

Vision for American Single Malt

James Pellingra 22:36

That's great. I've been seeing it more and more pop up on back bars and in retail shops around the area, so it's definitely making its way through our territory at this point, just solely based on the quality of the distillate, which is always exciting for us, when the quality of a product speaks for itself and it's selling itself, thankfully. Which leads me into selling itself: American Single Malt. Probably the most difficult category in whisk(e)y in the United States at this point, just because of its youth and finally being recognized as a category within the United States. We've seen some distilleries close this past year around the country, some brands go under. People generally do this as more of a side project. For some of our other distilleries that we have here in the portfolio or previously, it's a release that they do seasonally, but it's never been the main focus of their distillation. Where do you see the industry going for American Single Malt? And where are you going to succeed where others have failed?

Shane Fraser 23:42

Oh, two good questions. I think it's a really exciting category. I think it'll take a long time for people to get used to American Single Malt because you say "single malt" and they go "Scotch," which it's not, because it can't be, because it's not made in Scotland. But I think it will grow slowly and will eventually either take a small amount of the Scotch sales that come to America, and maybe some of the bourbon ones. I don't know. I think it's an exciting project. And all the American Single Malts are slightly different, which is good. I would hope that, come time, it does become really, really big and you've got regional flavors, like you've got your Texas or West Coast or whatever, they've got slightly different, a bit like Speyside and Highland and stuff like that, but on a grander scale. That would be exciting. For us, I think we're in an ideal spot because we're producing exceptional whisky already, done in a traditional kind of Scotch way, but in America. We're ahead of the game quality-wise, but I think we're behind in age and history of some of the other distilleries that have been making American Single Malt for years. I think it will grow. And I keep saying, Rome wasn't built in a day; it'll take a while. I'll be bald and gray by the time it really hits.

James Pellingra 25:10

Most likely. Every master distiller really only gets to see the maturity of their whiskey twice in their lifetime, which is insane to me. I've always heard that from the folks over at Wild Turkey and Four Roses. A master distiller only really gets to experience the quality and the breadth of their life's work twice, which is purely insane to only see success twice. And it's all a guessing game throughout the entire process, too, because, like you said, you have no idea when the maturity level is gonna hit, or qualitatively it's gonna max out and then it turns to wood chips or anything like that.

Shane Fraser 25:48

Especially at 10 mile, because we're monitoring the whiskey all the time—we're doing a three-year-old, a four-year-old, five-year-old—you're seeing how it's maturing, and you're understanding what's going on there. It is changing from year to year. We found that people prefer the three-year-old to the four-year-old, and now they prefer the five-year-old. So is it going every second year that it's getting better? Who knows. That's the fun of it.

James Pellingra 26:13

What is your definition of perfection when it comes to your distillate or the outcome of the sales or just the broad strokes of your distillery?

Shane Fraser 26:24

You're always striving for perfection. You're always looking to get something more out of it. You can get to a point, but you're always looking to try and get to the next step. In the distillery, you're always looking for a bit more efficiency. Perfection in the spirit is to do things very consistently and don't change things too much. I say, in my line of work, if you start chopping and changing, you're never going to get perfection or what you think is perfection. I'm certainly not perfect, but I think what we're doing at the distillery is close to the best whiskey I've made for a long, long time. It is a difficult question to ask. But I think consistency is key to trying to get to perfection. I would say that's as close as I can get.

James Pellingra 27:12

Obviously, within the world of American Single Malt, perfection is something completely unrealized at this point since we don't know what that looks like. And I think one of the most exciting aspects of what I do, and being in the wine and spirits industry, is seeing the progression and the growth for our distilleries, our master distillers, the people in the industry, and seeing the innovation and also the outcome of the consistency, as you mentioned, what comes of all the time spent doing this. I think a lot of people think of distillers as innovators and things of that nature. No. Much of what they do is maintaining consistency and adapting to their environment and things that are going on, whether it's a change in your grain, your water source changes up, your cooperage dries up, you just never know. I like the idea that perfection for you is just consistency, because battling the outer elements is a job all on its own. It makes a lot of sense.

Shane Fraser 28:17

Yeah, you can't control the other things, you just have to control what you can do.

James Pellingra 28:21

Yeah, of course.

Shane Fraser 28:22

That's in life I would say!

James Pellingra 28:24

It's a good motto. Always battling the external factors to try and maintain. Makes total sense. Well, I just want to say thank you so much for being here today and and making the trip down from Wassaic. It's been a pleasure having you and really diving into Tenmile and your history and where you guys are going from here.

Shane Fraser 28:46

Yeah, it's going to be an exciting time. Thank you.

James Pellingra 28:48

You're welcome.

Harmon Skurnik 28:53

Skurnik Unfiltered is recorded at Skurnik Wines & Spirits headquarters in the Flatiron District of New York City. If you found the conversation interesting, please consider liking, subscribing, and leaving a review. You can stay up to date on our show and upcoming events by following @skurnikwines on Instagram and visiting our website at skurnik.com