In an exclusive account for The Whiskey Wash, West of Tradition producer Nate Barlow reveals how Westland’s story of American Single Malt became a feature film.
“They made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.”
So that’s not how it happened, but it’s such a great (paraphrase of a) movie line, I couldn’t resist. No severed horse heads, that’s for sure. The idea for shooting a documentary on the rise of American Single Malt developed out of an ongoing conversation that director Greg Swartz had with Jason Moore and the team at Westland Distillery about ASM as a category.
When we discovered that their enthusiasm for such a film matched ours, West of Tradition, directed by Greg and produced by Trevor Jones, Nate Barlow, and Joe Vulopas, was born.
We worked with the Westland team on prior projects, so we already had a strong relationship. On top of which, Westland is owned by Remy Martin, and Remy was absolutely thrilled by our PBS documentary The Water of Life – A Whisky Film, which focused on another brand in the Remy portfolio, Bruichladdich. Our style, our history, our connections… we felt that our team was a perfect fit to tell the American Single Malt tale, and they agreed.
How West of Tradition Began
Unlike many films, including some of our own, the whole process from shooting to premiere and release took less than a year.
In January 2026, we flew to Seattle for principal photography. Interviews with the Westland team, including Tyler Pederson, Jason Moore, Shane Armstrong, Phoebe Dawson, Scott Sell, and many more. Interviews with Lucky Envelope, a brewery that takes part in Westland’s Cask Exchange, and with DeLille Cellars, a winery that also takes part in that very same program. Testimonials. B-roll. Verite. All the building blocks for our style of documentary.
Building an American Single Malt Whiskey Documentary
There is an old adage in filmmaking, first attributed to the legendary French director Robert Bresson, that, “A film is born three times. First in the writing of the script, once again in the shooting, and finally in the editing.” That holds true for documentaries. To be sure, there is not a screenplay per se, but a documentary still undergoes a writing phase in the drafting of the interview questions and the crafting of the overall structure the director sees the film taking, thus necessitating the who, what, when, and where that needs to be shot.
But it’s that third part of the process where documentaries truly come to life. Another quote, this one from Philip Seymour Hoffman: “The film is made in the editing room. The shooting of the film is about shopping, almost. It’s like going to get all the ingredients together, and you’ve got to make sure before you leave the store that you got all the ingredients. And then you take those ingredients and you can make a good cake–or not.”
That goes double, if not triple, for documentaries.
Our first meetings to craft a cohesive whole out of what we had filmed took place in February. A couple of ideas immediately came to mind. Firstly, we wanted to intertwine the two stories of Westland and American Single Malt, each one flowing into and out of the other. Secondly, certain themes stood out that we wanted to address: community, sustainability, the innovation and pioneering spirit of the Pacific Northwest. Together, these intentions would feed and build upon each other. No story about whisk(e)y is just a story about whisk(e)y, but what the drink represents and how it relates to the world around it.
The first step in actual structuring involved a paper edit, pulling lines from the transcripts that built the story we wanted to tell and then ordering them, and reordering them, and reordering them again, until they made the most sense. This paper edit thus provided the road map for the first rough cut. Of course, once the footage is cut together, much of what looks good on paper doesn’t necessarily play as well as hoped when juxtaposed, but that’s the editing process, working and reworking…
…and realizing what other interviews you need to round out the film.
Telling the Wider American Single Malt Whiskey Story
We always include outside experts in our documentaries. These interviews not only provide other perspectives but the greater context from which to view the primary subjects properly. While some of these can occasionally be shot early or in advance, the prime time to approach these interviewees is during the early editing phase, when we have a sense of where the film might be going.
After all, in a documentary, unlike a scripted narrative film, one never knows what someone might say that opens up new avenues of exploration and/or causes one to diverge from their pre-principal photography plans. So these outside experts work best when the questions have that prior basis from which to start. For West of Tradition, we interviewed Daniel Whittington, founder of the Whisky Marketing School and Wizard Academy, in Austin; Col. Mark Pruett, editor-in-chief of Whiskey Network Magazine, in Los Angeles; and Jess Lomas of Single Cask Nation and Annie Hill, Professor at Heriot Watt University and its International Centre for Brewing and Distilling, in Scotland.
Yes, our American Single Malt Whiskey documentary has an international component.
Not surprisingly, those areas of further exploration opened up by the first round of interviews necessitated a second set in Seattle, not only with Westland, but with restaurant and bar owners, a farmer, and the Filson outdoors wear company.
Additionally, while Westland stood as our main distillery story, no film about the rise of a new whiskey category such as American Single Malt would do the story justice without interviewing the other pioneers, or the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission itself, just like in The Water of Life, where the story of Bruichladdich stood against the backdrop of the resurgence of Scottish whisky after the Whisky Loch, but for which we also interviewed such luminaries as Billy Walker at GlenAllachie and David Stewart at The Balvenie.
For West of Tradition we had the great good fortune to speak with Justin Aden, Master Blender at Stranahan’s American Single Malt Whiskey in Colorado; Caitlin Bartlemay, Master Distiller at McCarthy’s Oregon Single Malt Whiskey; Gareth Moore, CEO of Virginia Distillery Company; Stephen Paul, Co-Founder of Whiskey Del Bac in Arizona; Murphy Quint, Master Distiller & Director of Operations at Cedar Ridge Distillery in Iowa; and Lance Winters, Master Distiller, and Dave Smith, Head Distiller, at St. George Spirits in California. We also shot one last, but very important, inside and outside expert, the President of American Single Malt Whiskey Commission, Steve Hawley.
All in all, not just pioneers of the American Single Malt Whiskey movement, but distillers from across the country, thus covering many of the unique climates that influence American Single Malt Whiskey and hence the gamut of regional variations that make this new category of whiskey so special.
Bringing West of Tradition Together
If that sounds like a lot of interviews, it is. I haven’t even listed all of them. And that’s not even going into all the B-roll, verite, and archival material. Modern documentaries, freed from the cost and physical constraints of film, involve a staggering amount of footage. Fortunately, our team includes two fantastic cinematographers, Brad Kenyon and Alfonse Palaima, and a brilliant editor, Rob Chatlin, to put that massive collection of footage together.
As already stated, editing is an iterative process, and while a production team could probably tweak a film forever, eventually we arrived at a cut with which we were truly happy. From there we proceeded to those “finishing” steps without which a movie is not truly complete: color correction, music, and sound. And then… done.
Sooner or later there are no more “and thens”, just a completed film with which we are truly proud. And that is what you can see now.
West of Tradition is currently available on Amazon Prime, with other platforms to follow.
Read the full article at Exclusive: How Westland Turned A Whiskey Story Into A Feature Film
