Smoke has been hanging over Eastern Washington for weeks now, and the Spokane Complex Fire is still burning. For the people living out there, the damage isn't measured in acres. It's measured in houses that aren't there anymore, in medications left behind, in a truck that got too close to the flames and didn't make it out.
A Seattle distillery decided to do something about it, and the way it chose to help says a lot about how the spirits business actually works when you strip away the marketing.
Through the end of August, Copperworks Distilling Co. is donating $20 from every bottle sold of its Farmsmith American Single Malt Whiskey to the H.O.M.E. Starts Here Spokane Complex Fire Relief Fund. Not a percentage buried in fine print. Twenty dollars, per bottle, going straight to a fund built to get people back on their feet.
Where the Money Actually Goes
The H.O.M.E. Starts Here fund handles the unglamorous work that follows a disaster after the news trucks leave. It covers short-term and long-term rent assistance for families who lost their housing. It pays for medical equipment, the kind of thing insurance fights you on and nobody thinks about until they need it. It arranges transportation services for people with no way to get to work, to a doctor, to a temporary place to stay. And it handles the other critical resources that come up when a community has to rebuild from the ground up.
Anyone who'd rather skip the whiskey and just write a check can donate directly at https://my.spokanecity.org/endinghomelessness/donations. Anyone who'd like to do both can buy a bottle at https://tinyurl.com/CopperworksFarmsmith.
The Whiskey Comes From the Same Ground
Here's what makes this more than a company picking a cause off a list.
Farmsmith wasn't created as a charity product. It was created to celebrate the barley fields of Washington by exploring the impact of single variety, single farm, and single growing year barley. That's a mouthful, but the idea behind it is simple enough. Most whiskey gets made from grain that's been pooled together from wherever, blended into anonymity long before it hits the still. Farmsmith goes the opposite direction. One type of barley. One farm. One harvest year. Then you find out what that combination actually tastes like.
The current release is made with single-varietal Genie barley grown 20 miles west of Spokane. It was malted by LINC Malt, right there in Spokane, by people Copperworks describes as friends who have been instrumental to the distillery's journey for many years.
Read that again. The barley in the bottle came out of the ground roughly 20 miles from the fire. The malting happened in the city that's dealing with the aftermath. This isn't a Seattle company reaching across the mountains to help strangers. It's a company helping the people who make its whiskey possible.
Who LINC Malt Is
LINC Malt is worth knowing about on its own. The operation honors the work of skilled Inland Northwest farmers, and it stays committed to farmer-owned farms rather than the consolidated corporate operations that have swallowed up so much of American agriculture. It prioritizes relationships that span the grain supply chain, meaning the malthouse knows the grower, and the distiller knows the malthouse, and nobody in that chain is a line item on a purchase order.
For a middle-sized malting operation in Eastern Washington, that's a deliberate business choice. It costs more and it's harder to scale. It also means that when a fire tears through the region, everybody in that chain knows exactly whose family is affected.
"They Are Our Friends"
Jason Parker, President and Co-Founder of Copperworks Distilling Co., put it plainly.
"The farming families and partners around Spokane aren't just our suppliers; they are our friends," Parker said. "Our thoughts are with the individuals, families, and communities affected by the Spokane Complex Fire."
That distinction matters. Plenty of companies talk about their sourcing partners. Fewer of them turn a flagship product into a relief effort when those partners get hit.
Local agriculture and local communities sit at the heart of every Copperworks release. The distillery is committed to sourcing local barley, including Salmon-Safe certified barley when it's available, and to showing off the differences between Washington's growing regions through the spirits themselves. That last part is the whole thesis of Farmsmith. If the region matters, then what happens to the region matters too.
A Distillery Built on a Question
Copperworks opened in 2013 in the waterfront tourist district of downtown Seattle, a high-traffic stretch where a lot of people wander in without knowing what they're walking into. There's a tasting room and a gift shop. There's also a working distillery producing small-batch American Single Malt Whiskey, a series of gins, and vodka, every one of them made from malted barley.
The company was founded by co-owners and distillers Jason Parker and Micah Nutt, two craft brewers with more than 30 years of combined experience in the alcohol industry. They didn't come to distilling through the usual door. They came at it from the beer side, and they built the place around one question:
"How would spirits taste if they were distilled from superior craft beer (without the hops) instead of the typical methods or ingredients of conventional distilleries?"
That question is less academic than it sounds. Most distilleries treat the wash, the fermented liquid that goes into the still, as an intermediate step nobody's supposed to drink. Parker and Nutt treated it like beer, because that's what they knew how to make. Better beer going in, better whiskey coming out. That was the bet.
The bet paid off. Chasing that answer pushed Copperworks into becoming a pioneer in American Single Malt Whiskey, a category that has since taken off with serious national and international interest. Ten years ago most American drinkers couldn't have told you what American Single Malt was. Now it's one of the fastest-growing corners of the whiskey world, and Copperworks got there early.
The Stills Came From Scotland
The spirits are distilled in traditional copper stills that were built in Scotland specifically for Copperworks, and specifically for the distillation of each individual spirit. That's not a decorative detail. Still shape changes what comes off the spirit run, and having stills made to order for particular products rather than adapting one all-purpose setup is a meaningful commitment of money and space.
The Awards Cabinet
The recognition has piled up. Copperworks was named 2018 Distillery of the Year by the American Distilling Institute, which is about as strong a peer endorsement as the craft side of the business hands out. The whiskey and the gin have both taken Double-Gold medals, and the company's spirits have scored 94 to 96 points in prestigious competitions.
Closer to home, readers voted Copperworks Best Distillery in the 2023 Best In The PNW contest presented by The Seattle Times. That one comes from the public rather than a judging panel, which counts for something different.
The spirits are stocked at bars, restaurants, and retail stores throughout Washington State. A list of where to find them is posted at https://copperworksdistilling.com/bar-and-restaurants.
Worth the Trip if You're in Seattle
For anyone who ends up in downtown Seattle with an afternoon to burn, the distillery runs tastings, tours, and events focused on enjoying and learning about fine distilled spirits. The one that stands out is the hands-on single-malt whiskey blending workshop, where guests work with different barrel components and build a blend themselves.
It's the kind of thing that sounds gimmicky until you try it and realize how much harder blending is than it looks. Anybody who's spent years drinking whiskey and forming opinions about it should probably find out once whether those opinions survive contact with an actual blending bench.
Why This One's Different
The whiskey-for-charity playbook is well worn at this point. Most of the time it's a partnership with a national organization, a nice label, and a donation figure that sounds bigger than it is.
This is a smaller and more direct thing. A distillery in Seattle buying barley from farms outside Spokane, having it malted in Spokane, bottling it under a name meant to honor the farmers who grew it, and then sending $20 a bottle back to the people in that same area who are trying to put their lives together after a fire.
There's no complicated way to describe that. Somebody's friends got hurt, and they're doing what they can with what they've got. The fact that what they've got happens to be a well-made single malt is a bonus.
The donation runs through the end of August. Bottles are available at https://tinyurl.com/CopperworksFarmsmith, and direct contributions to the relief fund can be made at https://my.spokanecity.org/endinghomelessness/donations. More about the distillery is at https://copperworksdistilling.com.
