After coming back to Stockholm from High Coast, I took the MS Cinderella ferry over to Helsinki. Even though my visit to Helsinki Distilling Company wasn’t happening for another day yet, I got a little preview in the tax-free shop onboard…
Once I arrived in Helsinki, it wasn’t hard to head up to the eastern side of the city centre for this urban distillery. Not only are urban whiskymakers a relative rarity in Europe’s cities, but even more so for capitals. It’s nice to have such easy access to a distillery for once!
These premises used to be a slaughterhouse outside Helsinki, but the city’s expansion hemmed it in and forced the owners to move to a larger, newer facility elsewhere. I caught co-owner and distiller Mikko Mykkänen on his smoke break, but he rapidly gave me a warm welcome to begin showing me around. In fact, I was first introduced to Helsinki Distilling Company (HDC) whiskey back in 2023 when I spoke to the other co-founder, Kai Kilpinen, for a Whisky Magazine article about their rye whisky.
HDC started production in 2014, meaning they were just able to release their first 10 year old bottling before my visit. If you remember some of the details from my visit to Kyrö last year, you’ll know they started around the same time. Both distilleries hit the gin boom well, and while Kyrö is the leading gin brand in Finland, HDC also produces plenty of gin.
That said, this is a distinctly smaller operation, so Mikko is always having to rotate quickly between products and make the most of a smaller setup. He believes the boom of gin-making across Europe is plateauing. A reminder that we’re in Finland - long drink (pre-mixed gin and soft drink) is a leading product for HDC, and you’ll understandably see it plastered across their social media.
DISTILLATION
HDC uses pot stills with optional columns attached, all fitted into quite a small space. While this isn’t a craft distillery doing long fermentations like Naguelann, they do emphasize a lighter cut of spirit, and they use a few plates in these attached columns when running rye spirit through the stills.
The power for HDC comes from biogas, generated in part using the leftover draff from fermentation. Methanol from the distilling heads gets sent off for chemical refining. While other Nordic distilleries are moving to low-carbon production methods (particularly in Finland), Mikko points out that this isn’t entirely a bottom-up trend. The Finnish and Swedish national alcohol monopolies (Alko and Systembolaget respectively) are specifically promoting more sustainably produced products. A good use of that power/influence over the industry!
DETAILS
- 72 hour fermentation (can be 96 hours on occasion)
- Five 2000L washbacks
- Double distillation (malt) / Column (rye)
- 2000L Carl pot stills
- 30,000 LPA (whisky, approximately 90% rye and 10% malt)
- 100,000LPA (other spirits)
One fun detail - HDC uses the ‘whiskey’ spelling. The founders were inspired by American whiskey making in particular, plus one of the starting members was Irish. It’s a simple thing to make a distillery unique, but crucially, it’s not a gimmick for promotion - it’s just a natural quirk of the people/place that made it, as it should be!
MATURATION
To see HDC’s whiskey maturing, we have to take a short trip around to a separate premises. You can find this in online maps as the ‘Helsinki Whiskey Cellar’, about 10-15 minutes walk from the distillery (it’s also directly across from the Vanha talvitie tram stop, which connects you straight to Pasila station).
Built in the 1860s for a brewery up the hill, this old lager has great stone walls and a wooden ceiling. The sea used to be only 100 metres away (before some more modern land reclamation), and ice blocks from the frozen waters would be cut and hauled in here on horseback to keep everything cold. This space was neglected for a time, only serving as storage for the city of Helsinki, but HDC recognised its potential. Mikko says he is very happy to have a space which is so consistent in temperature/humidity for aging whiskey.
My favourite part of this warehouse, however, were a small set of casks I has been waiting to see since first learning about them two years ago... Finnish oak casks! These octagonal beauties are held together with an unusual style of metal bands and sealed with wax, a legacy of the need to work with challenging timber and a lack of local coopers.
Very soon, HDC will be releasing a ‘hyper Finnish single malt’. That’s not the official title, just the way Mikko described it to me. Point is, it was made using barley from just outside the city, before ageing in these unique Finnish casks. Mikko isn’t just messing around with these oak barrels - he’s writing his PhD on how whisky ages in these Finnish oak casks! He only started in 2024, so the full results of that study aren’t finished yet, but it’s great to see the depth of this attention to detail.
To be specific, these casks are made using northern varieties of quercus robur (often referred to reductively as just ‘European oak’, or pedunculate oak). Mikko was told these trees would not be particularly suitable for casks, but the results so far have been promising…
Most HDC spirit goes into 200L new US oak or ex-bourbon barrels. Some small Spanish casks are used for finishing, often seasoned with PX. They also get beer barrels on loan from nearby distilleries, but HDC feels the pinch of cask costs like any other distillery. All those US barrels used to cost them 200 euros when they first started, and now it’s more like 350…
TASTING
Every whiskey currently produced at HDC is around 5 to 6 years old, with the intention to slowly increase the age of each dram over time (a little like the plan with High Coast’s NAS expressions). Most are bottled at 47.5% ABV, which Mikko sees as the sweet spot for their spirit (though some of their single malts have a heavier body, which he sees as suitable for lower strengths). As I’ve often said, it’s a good sign when distilleries consistently bottle a little higher than 46% (or especially 40%), often sacrificing a little quantity for a notable increase in quality.
Also worth noting, the tasting space here is amazing! Really makes use of the stone walls and cellar setting. It was a great place to start the long lineup of HDC drams to taste…
Kuusikko is a limited release, and in my opinion, a great idea. It combines whisky from each distillery in Finland, creating a 49% blended whisky which is very rich and well-balanced. Whisky writer and Edrington rep Jarkko Nikkanen served as the master blender for Kuusikko, and he knew what he was doing. The dram has a good body, with Kyrö rye clearly present but sharing the space with peat and sherry flavours. I wasn’t sure what to expect before tasting, but I’d love to see more of this in future!
The more promising and developed national whisky industries of Europe need to do more of this. You could say Beek does this in the Netherlands by combining multiple Dutch whiskies, but that’s not as comprehensive (or, in my opinion, on this level of flavour). The Austrian Whisky Association’s blend is probably the best counterpart out there, and I haven't had the chance to try that one yet!
No. 20 is very light in colour, despite being bottled at HDC’s standard strength of 47.5%. A no age statement expression, it shies away from the heavy earthiness of Kyrö-style malt and instead adds more citrus. While you can taste the fact it's a young dram, it doesn;t spoil the experience, especially as a few creamy notes appear on the nose after the glass gets a few minutes to sit.
No. 18 is an Islay finished whiskey, very soft on the palate before some herbal smoke appears. Spice follows the pine forest aromas, making for something which is interesting but lacking a little of the other batches’ depth. 47.5% ABV.
No. 25 is a sherry cask aged rye malt, bottled at only 43% but retaining a very rich nose and colour! The lower ABV helps to keep the palate gentle and low on tannins, while the PX and oloroso aromas blasting out of the glass keep it smelling fantastic. The finish is very warming in the throat but without much spice in the mouth, adding to a very pleasant effect. Just like High Coast, HDC are finding it hard to keep up with demand for sherry cask whiskies at the moment!
Now this is unique - HDC’s own Applejack! They source apples from the western end of Helsinki, harvesting and processing them by hand - Mikko finds this a very fun part of the whole process. He makes a small batch of smoked and unsmoked applejack each year, selling it all in Finland. In fact, it's what kicked off his distilling career.
It’s not supposed to be a calvados copy, nor is this applejack in the sense of the freeze-distilled, methanol-laden drink once popular in England and America. I found it very light upon tasting. It doesn’t have that rough brandy edge of real calvados, only a faint, fragrant apple finish which is so gentle that you could drink this all too quickly.
No. 24 is the result of whisky meeting this applejack distilling. A 53.2% cask strength bottling of single malt, aged for seven years on these ex-applejack casks. The nose is… nice, but perhaps understandably, a bit hard to place. I detect deep notes like cider coming through, but I strongly suspect I wouldn’t call them that if I didn’t know that apples were involved. It’s certainly a balanced single malt.
The applejack is just one of HDC’s many other products with which it experiments as a craft producer. Especially post-COVID, fewer people speak of a ‘craft’ drinks industry, Mikko says. That’s not to say things are going badly for HDC, just that the conversation has shifted since they started up a decade ago. Bottlings like this one for Finnish metal band Amorphis have helped to publicise the whiskey being produced here in more recent times.
Tahko T1 is an organic single malt, fully matured in PX and oloroso before going into bottles at 47.5% ABV. This really took me by surprise - it turns out that this dram comes from Tahko Distillery, a satellite distillery created by HDC to focus on organic products! This whiskey won prizes at the Tallinn Whisky Fair in 2024 (an event which, incidentally, Mikko recommends). This parallel distillery is currently producing about a 70/30 split of rye malt and barley malt spirit. The T1 has an amazingly rich nose and palate, bursting with vanilla.
No. 17 is a 100% rye malt, so it naturally invites some comparison with Kyrö. This dram has a sweeter, more perfumey style of rye than its northern counterpart. The finish resembles it a bit more, but still less heavy and earthy. Nice to see the differences, while it still retains some of that shared Finnish rye DNA!
No. 27 is a corn whisky, specifically a 43% ABV dram made using Pioneer corn and aged in new US oak. There’s something slightly saline about the first impression it gives, which then fades into a perfumey sweetness without ever getting too rich. In fact, Mikko explains, Pioneer is a sweetcorn rather than the usual field corn employed by US distillers. The irony is, that makes for a less overtly sweet whisky, hence this No. 27 is pleasantly distinct from traditional American corn whiskey. It’s a craft product: “We didn't want to make a gas station version of American whiskey”, as Mikko puts it.
HDC produces one batch of Finnish corn whisky per year, reflecting Mikko’s love of bourbon. The mashbill is 60% corn, 40% barley malt and rye mix. Overall, I feel the No. 27 is very smooth, and by this point in the tasting I feel like that’s something I can pin down as a trademark part of HDC’s developing style. In fact, I think it suits Helsinki being the warmest, most southerly part of Finland - you get something a little gentler and more relaxed than the rye from a colder, harsher landscape.
Around 100km north of Helsinki, hills and lakes mark the shift into a colder climate. Finland’s farmland is marked by 5 categories, Mikko explains, with 1 being the best growing conditions and 5 the worst: Helsinki sits in region 1, while Lapland is number 5. This all makes a big difference for a distillery in Finland trying to use local materials. Kyrö can use local rye, but oak, apples, maize? All out of the question up near Vaasa, but not so for HDC in the country’s south.
The 10 Year Old Rye Malt (53.2%) is a prelude to future 10 year old expressions which will be released around late 2026. This 148 bottle batch came from their first ever cask, a small French oak one which Mikko vividly remembers filling. HDC’s founders literally counted the seconds until they were able to open it up for a taste test, back when it crossed the 3 year mark. It felt like he had only filled it the day before, Mikko recalls, and then suddenly he was tasting it. Nice to know that waiting doesn’t feel too long for everyone in the whisky world!
You know how ‘christmas cake’ is a common tasting note for sherried whiskies? The 10 YO Rye Malt truly tastes of Christmas cake, or to be more precise, Christmas pudding. The only time I’ve ever enjoyed the real thing was eating one person’s family recipe in Norfolk, back in 2014 - and this brought me straight back to that experience. Some tannins, but not blowing you away even at a higher ABV; the HDC smoothness is retained. Vanilla and raisins are strongly present, only fading a little fast on the finish.
Mikko’s attitude mirrors the urban, modern, switched-on feel of HDC and its environs. He cites the Tallinn Whisky Fair as a good event in part because it's not just full of old men. Mikko started out years ago testing runs on a 10L moonshine still, and now look where he is! HDC is overshadowed on an international level by Kyrö and Teerenpeli, but it is absolutely maturing to the point where it should be spoken of in similar terms. The distillery’s cocktail bar is also impressive, and apparently sees a 50/50 mix of tourists and locals alike. Be ready if you visit - it’s busy on the weekends, especially in summer!
And to close things off, they have a burger van parked in the courtyard which apparently wins awards for their burgers. After tasting one post-tour, I can confirm - they deserve it!
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