Tasting notes

nose

maple syrup and brown sugar over charred oak, with pipe tobacco, leather, malted cocoa powder and a wisp of campfire smoke

palate

toasted oak and wood sugars, root beer and sassafras, malted chocolate and baking spice, with leather underneath

finish

long; spiced dark chocolate, plum and roasted almond linger with toffee, then dry tobacco leaf, black pepper and charred oak close it out

Mash bill

74% white corn, 15% red winter wheat, 11% malted barley. This is Garrison Brothers' single house recipe, a wheated bourbon built on food-grade white corn, with wheat in place of rye to soften the grain's spice. The grain is milled fresh each day and cooked one batch at a time into a sweet mash, then fermented for four to five days with the distillery's own yeast strain.

Why it's craft

Garrison Brothers was founded in 2006 by Dan and Nancy Garrison in Hye and received the first permit to distill bourbon outside Kentucky and Tennessee. It mills, mashes, ferments, distills and ages everything on its ranch. This is its first Bottled-in-Bond release, which by law must come from one distilling season at one distillery, rest at least four years in a federally bonded warehouse and go into the bottle at 100 proof.