Tasting notes

nose

Burnt wood and a whiff of spent gunpowder open onto chocolate-covered cherry, dark brown sugar and toasted marshmallow, with molasses, cinnamon stick and worn leather beneath

palate

Thick and coating; spiced dark chocolate, cocoa powder and raisin over toasted caramel and vanilla, with light smoke and cinnamon building

finish

Long; dried stone fruit, brandied cherry and caramelized sugar hold on, then charred oak, black pepper, leather and a touch of clove dry it out

Mash bill

74% white corn, 15% red winter wheat, 11% malted barley. Cowboy Bourbon comes from Garrison Brothers' single house recipe, a wheated bourbon in which soft red winter wheat stands in for rye on a base of food-grade white corn. The grain is ground fresh each day and cooked one batch at a time as a sweet mash, then fermented for four to five days with the distillery's own yeast strain into a beer of 17 to 18% alcohol.

Why it's craft

Cowboy Bourbon is Garrison Brothers' yearly barrel-strength release, first bottled in 2013: barrels Master Distiller Donnis Todd marks out and leaves to age longer, then bottles with no water added and no filtering. Dan and Nancy Garrison founded the distillery in 2006 in Hye, in the Texas Hill Country, and it mills, mashes, ferments and distills its own grain on copper pot stills before aging every barrel on the ranch. In that heat a barrel loses around 40% of its contents a year to evaporation, against about 15% in Kentucky.