Discovery Club November 2025: Painted Stave

The Lost Lantern November 2025 Discovery Club release is a little different than anything we’ve done before. So far, since the Discovery Club launched earlier this year, we’ve done bourbon, rye, finished bourbon, and American single malt. Now we’re moving onto an entirely different style, one that we’ve never done before: pot still whiskey, made primarily with unmalted barley.

This month’s Discovery Club release is a 5-year-old Delaware pot still whiskey from Painted Stave Distilling in Smyrna, Delaware. It is our first pot still-style whiskey (although certainly not our first whiskey distilled on pot stills), our first from Painted Stave, and our first from the state of Delaware.

Introducing Painted Stave

I’m an elected board member of the American Craft Spirits Association, the organization representing craft distilleries across the country (and I love that I, as an independent bottler rather than as a distiller, was elected to the board!). And last year, I took a trip to Washington, D.C., to help represent the craft spirits industry on Capitol Hill (yea, it was kind of cool). I took an extra two days beforehand to visit distilleries in the Mid-Atlantic, specifically Maryland and Delaware. That same trip took me to Baltimore Spirits, our June Discovery Club release, and also to Painted Stave in Smyrna, Delaware.  Located in central Delaware, north of the state capital of Dover and south of its largest city, Wilmington, the town of almost 13,000 is clearly on the rise as a family-friendly commuter haven.   

The first thing I noticed about Painted Stave is the striking building it’s in. Many of the country’s distilleries are in very industrial buildings, often in out-of-the-way warehouse districts, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But Painted Stave has a much more distinct location. Located right downtown, Painted Stave is located in an old movie house: a one-screen movie theater that dates back to the 1940s, but closed many years ago. The building’s roots are still very obvious, from the actual stillhouse (where the movie screen once would have been) to the tasting room itself, still bearing the imprints of a movie theater lobby.

And nowadays, the feature attraction is, of course, whiskey.

Painted Stave makes a wide array of spirits–partly because it has a robust and busy cocktail lounge and cocktail patio, and according to Delaware regulations distillery must make any spirit they serve themselves. So they have a full range of spirits, from vodka to gin to liqueurs. But whiskey has always been the passion and the priority.

Painted Stave is a quintessential example of a regional distillery, one that is happy to serve its local area (in this case, Delaware, Maryland, D.C., and parts of Virginia) but doesn’t want to grow to become a massive-scale distillery that pumps out enough whiskey to sell throughout the entire country. 

Its whiskey program is itself wide-ranging, spanning across rye, bourbon, corn whiskey, and even pot still whiskey – the type we eventually selected for our Discovery Club cask. And, unusual for a distillery of its size, most of its releases are bottled-in-bond. For the uninitiated, that means among other things that the distillery made the whiskey themselves, aged it for at least four years, and bottled it at exactly 100 proof. Most small distilleries don’t age their whiskey for very long, regardless of what’s appropriate for the climate, so committing to a four year age statement at a minimum means that the distillery is serious about its whiskey program.

When cofounder Mike Rasmussen showed me around, he explained that 100 proof spirits were exactly the sweet spot for their cocktail-focused offerings at their tasting room, and for local palates. The Painted Stave cocktail bar, which is in the building’s old lobby as well as in the cocktail garden outside, is designed around showcasing their spirits in cocktails. But as you all know, at Lost Lantern our default is always cask strength, and a lot of us primarily drink whiskey neat or on the rock (even if we enjoy the occasional cocktail too!). So a cask strength release of Painted Stave seemed like a natural fit for the Discovery Club.

Painted Stave Delaware Pot Still Whiskey: The Discovery Club Cask

The Lost Lantern November 2025 Discovery Club single cask is a Painted Stave single pot still whiskey, the first whiskey in that style we’ve ever released. It is bottled at a very robust cask strength of 67.4% ABV (134.8 proof), and was aged for 5 years in a 30-gallon used oak cask that previously held Painted Stave’s own rye whiskey (and ex-rye cask aging is also something you don’t see every day!). 

It was made from a mashbill of 70% unmalted barley, 10% malted barley, 10% beechwood-smoked malted barley, and 10% rye. Those of you who are serious Irish whiskey lovers will note that, with less than 30% malted barley in the mashbill, it would not meet the requirements to be an Irish single pot still whiskey (Neither does it meet another key requirement, since Delaware is not currently part of Ireland). But in the American distilling world, where pot still whiskey is fairly unusual and actual pot still-style whiskey is even more so, this is a very close cousin to its Irish counterparts… and even based on an old Irish recipe, according to the team at Painted Stave. 

Painted Stave’s pot still whiskey is one of its flagships, although its standard release is a little younger than this single cask and is usually bottled at 84 proof rather than at cask strength or bottled-in-bond. At that strength, it’s a beautiful, soft, and approachable whiskey with a surprising amount of depth. At cask strength… it’s a much more powerful beast, yet quite distinct from anything else we’ve released. With notes of honey oat cereal, white chocolate, snickerdoodles, and light vanilla spice, it has depth and elegance and power all at the same time. 

We see the Discovery Club both as a way to share and celebrate distilleries that we haven’t worked with before, and unsung or lesser known styles of whiskey made across the United States. This whiskey is the first in that vein, one that doesn’t fall into any of our usual styles of whiskey but is truly worth seeking out nonetheless.

I hope you enjoy the release and I look forward to your thoughts!

Adam