This is the second of two reviews coming out of the Dancing Goat release party on April 25, 2026. Stillman's Sonder 10 Year Straight Bourbon Whiskey was first.
Behold, the American Single Malt. We’ve been drinking it for years, but the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) only finalized the official "American Single Malt Whiskey" standard of identity in December 2024. Prior to that, ASM distillers were working in a gray zone. A few pioneering distilleries (Triple Eight, St. George Spirits, Stranahan’s, Westland) didn’t wait for regulatory legitimacy, but the market for ASM was slow to take off. ASM was difficult to promote because it lacked a shared definition, dedicated shelf space, and consumer identify. Even more problematic was the public’s overwhelming assumption that single malt was the purview of the Scotts, and the Scotts alone.
In 2025, ASM was assigned its identity: 100% malted barley, mashed/distilled/matured in the US at a single distillery, oak casks of 700L or smaller, distilled to no more than 160 proof, and bottled at no less than 80 proof. With category definition came the race to put product on shelves. The problem? Most distillers didn't have the stock to do it. That’s why we have so many 2-to-4 year ASMs hitting the market, with all the grassy, green, "spent barley" notes you’d expect from immature distillate. Some of it is good. Most of it tastes like a category still figuring itself out.
Dancing Goat Distillery, run by the Maas family in Cambridge, Wisconsin, has played a longer game. Back in early 2010, Midwest Grain Products (MGP) was running a series of exploratory single-malt distillation experiments. Those test runs produced a small population of orphaned barrels, aged stock that didn't fit any planned release and had no obvious home. Father and son Tom and Nick Maas quietly began collecting them, in semi-secret, until the inventory had grown and aged to the point where they could blend a consistent 10+ year ASM out of it. They ran the distillate through one of the more ambitious finishing programs in the category: three rounds of barrel selection, blending, and re-barreling across five cask types (new American oak, ex-bourbon, Wisconsin brandy, Cognac, and Calvados) before bottling at 96.4 proof. The result is an ASM that wears its age statement with the kind of gravitas the category usually has to fake.
I had the chance to visit Dancing Goat and meet with Nick and Tom Maas. Sipping on the 10 Year ASM while we talked, I remarked to Tom about the spirit’s smoothness and lack of watery barley funk. Tom answered very plainly: "We were able to take the time to make it right."
The Stats
- Name: Stillman's Sonder 10 Year American Single Malt Whiskey
- Producer: Dancing Goat Distillery
- Location: Distilled at MGP, Lawrenceburg, IN; aged, finished, blended, and bottled in Cambridge, WI
- Age Statement: 10 Years
- Mashbill: 100% Malted Barley
- Proof: 96.4
- MSRP: $70
Tasting Notes
Appearance: That slightly cloudy, deeper-gold-than-it-should-be color of organic apple juice. Long, slow legs on the swirl.
Nose: Opens floral and stone-fruity, transitioning to peach cobbler, before settling into toffee and soft oak. There's no rough edges or sharp notes pulling you back from the glass.
Palate: Round and luxurious. There's a caramel/vanilla bounce on entry that settles into stewed fruits (think plum and pear) with a sprinkle of cinnamon heat sliding toward the finish. The smooth, creamy mouthfeel is the headline here: 10 years in the barrel clearly makes a difference, as does a cask program integrating the malt sugars across so many finishing woods. The "spent barley" note that plagues so many ASMs just ain’t there.
Finish: That cinnamon expands into a warming coat of the throat, with a slow unfolding return to sweetness: bread pudding with caramel sauce. The oak makes a final appearance: it's a little thin, which is my one real critique. But that's a quibble on a longer-than-expected finish that feels like your favorite flannel shirt on a brisk autumn morning.
Verdict
Among the ASMs I've tried in the last 18 months, this is the one I'd hand to a Speyside drinker without an apology and without a disclaimer about the category being young. Beyond the age (which other distiller’s have been able the achieve), there’s the iterative cask program that gives the malt enough sources of complexity that no single wood note dominates (other reviewers have flagged a Nutella-like note in the same glass that's pulling fruity, sweet, and subtly spicy notes — that lines up with what I got).
And then there's the price. At $70, this is an exceptional value play for a 10-year ASM with this much wood program behind it. Most of the "premium" entries in the category are landing at $80–$120 for half the maturity and a single finishing cask. Stillman’s Sonder is the rare bottle in this segment where the math actually works in the drinker's favor.
Rating: 7.8/10 (t8ke) | RBEU: 0.85