Miles Munroe Leaves Westward Whiskey After 13 Years, Launches Grimoire Spirits
The American single malt whiskey category lost one of its most consequential architects last week. Miles Munroe, the master blender who spent thirteen years shaping Westward Whiskey’s identity from the inside out, has departed the Portland, Oregon distillery to launch his own venture — Grimoire Spirits, alongside the members-only Grimoire Whiskey Society. The announcement landed on June 30, 2026, and it carries weight far beyond a routine personnel change. Munroe wasn’t just filling bottles and approving barrels. He helped build the very grammar of what American single malt whiskey can be.
The Making of a Master Blender: A Road Less Traveled
Munroe’s path to the top of the American single malt world was anything but conventional. A former musician, bartender, and brewer, Munroe attended the American Brewers Guild, which helped bring a unique approach to whiskey craftsmanship — blending brewing techniques with distillation and emphasizing the distinctive character of Pacific Northwest malted barley. That background — equal parts rock stage and fermentation tank — gave Munroe a sensory fluency most distillers never develop. He understood flavor not as a technical checklist but as an experience built from the ground up.
For Munroe, it started quite a while back. He was working in fine dining while he was a musician — a lot of them ended up in the restaurant business while touring and playing music. It’s just part of the lifestyle; now it faces a significant creative transition as well. The brand’s core portfolio — the expressions Munroe developed and refined over thirteen years — will continue to exist. But whoever fills the master blender role at Westward carries a significant inheritance and an equally significant creative challenge.
Westward does still have the bones of an exceptional distillery. A perennial medalist in international spirit competitions, it’s well-known for producing flavorful whiskeys that reflect the brewing traditions and innovative spirit of the Pacific Northwest. The production infrastructure Munroe helped design and optimize — the grain sourcing relationships, the custom pot stills, the lightly charred barrel program — doesn’t disappear with him. And CEO Thomas Mooney, who has remained at the helm through the bankruptcy, has demonstrated that Westward’s commercial instincts remain sharp even under duress…