A Tour of Islay
Caol Ila 12, Lagavulin 16, Ardbeg Uigeadail. Three pours, north to south. Forty minutes of peat at the bar.
$125
The Library at Ember
Ember holds one of the largest privately curated whisky collections in the Midwest. Twelve hundred bottles. Forty-seven closed-distillery expressions. A program built over a decade by people who would rather pour than collect.
A whisky list should be a working document — alive, opinionated, and a little dangerous. Every bottle on this list is open. Every bottle was poured for someone last night, and will be poured for someone tomorrow.
We started buying bottles in 2014, when the Japanese market was quiet and the Islay distilleries were still releasing single-cask editions at sensible prices. We did not collect. We bought what we wanted to drink, and we poured it for the people who came in.
Some bottles got rare. The Karuizawas, the pre-merger Stitzel-Wellers, the Ardbeg single casks from the 1970s. We did not raise their prices to match the secondary market. We raised them enough to cover the bottle when it’s empty, and we keep them open until someone takes the last pour. If the last pour goes to a guest celebrating thirty years of marriage, we’re happy. If it goes to a young woman who just turned twenty-one and asked the bartender what to start with, we’re happier.
The flights below are a starting point. The real list lives on a clipboard behind the bar, gets updated every Friday, and has notes in the margins. Ask for it. Ask the bartender what they’ve been thinking about. The library opens for anyone who wants in.
A way in
Caol Ila 12, Lagavulin 16, Ardbeg Uigeadail. Three pours, north to south. Forty minutes of peat at the bar.
Hakushu 18, Yamazaki 18, Nikka Yoichi 15. Highland, sherry-cask, peated. A guided tour of the four houses.
Four expressions from the same Kentucky distillery at four ages — 8, 12, 17, and 23 years. You taste a single barrel grow up.
Three world whiskies you’ve never had. Selections change weekly based on what just landed in the cellar.
Three rare pours, no menu. The bartender selects based on what you drink, what you say, and what they have an open bottle of. Reservation required.
By region
Our largest single category. We started building the Japanese collection in 2014 when Yamazaki 25 was still on the shelf at retail. Most of these can no longer be replaced.
Sherry-cask. Mizunara wood finish. The whisky that put Suntory on the global map.
Last allocation, 2019. We have nine ounces remaining as of October.
Ghost distillery, closed 2001. Single-cask, single-vintage. Drink it slowly.
Forested, herbal, lightly smoked. The Highland Park of Japan.
Continuous-still grain whisky. The opening pour of the flight, every time.
Peat, brine, and iodine. The Islay shelf takes up an entire wall. Most of what we pour comes from independent bottlings — Signatory, Cadenhead’s, Gordon & MacPhail — at cask strength.
Cask #1135. Bottled for the Feis Ile 2013. Iodine, sea-spray, ash.
The Lagavulin. Smoke, dried fig, sea salt. The bourbon-drinker’s gateway to peat.
Sherry-cask matured. Tropical fruit, salted chocolate, soft peat. Unexpectedly graceful.
The most heavily peated whisky on Earth at 128.9 ppm. Drinks lighter than it reads.
Independent bottling. Refill bourbon. Sea-smoke, lemon zest, pipe tobacco.
The heart of Scotch. We pour the classics, but the depth of this category sits in the independent bottlings — single casks from Glen Grant, Glenfarclas, Mortlach, and the closed Glenugie distillery.
Single ex-sherry hogshead, bottled at cask strength. Christmas cake in liquid form.
The most-poured 18-year on the list. Always in stock.
Refill American oak. Beeswax, dried apricot, faint smoke. A whisky for slow conversation.
“The Beast of Dufftown.” Meaty, sulphured, complex. Drinks at proof, then opens with water.
Sherry-cask bruiser. The best $28-pour on the list. Don’t skip it.
Pre-Prohibition bourbon, single-cask rye, and the strange one-offs we love — Welsh, Indian, Taiwanese, Australian. The collection that surprises every Scotch drinker who wanders into it.
Allocation we received in 2018. We have approximately one bottle left.
Single-barrel selection. Dark caramel, cardamom, leather. The best American rye on the shelf.
Pre-merger Stitzel-Weller, bottled 1971. Wheated mash bill, the original Pappy DNA.
Single-cask Taiwanese whisky finished in red-wine barriques. Mango, tannin, cocoa.
Indian single malt, aged through monsoon humidity — equivalent to a 30-year Scotch.
Single-cask Tasmanian. World Whisky of the Year, 2014. Dried fruit, leather, sandalwood.
Every pour is measured at one ounce, served neat in cut crystal, with water from a single-source spring in Wisconsin. No ice unless you ask. The pipette is on the table. The bartender will tell you what cask the whisky came from and what they smell when they pour it. You will not be rushed.
If a bottle on this list runs out tonight, the bartender will tell you what they’d open next from the back room — and they probably won’t charge you the full price of the substitute. That’s the deal we’ve made with our regulars.
Twelve bar seats. First-come, first-served until 8 pm. After that, reservations only — and the Bartender’s Reserve flight is best booked a week ahead.