Tasting notes

nose

deep caramel and vanilla, then sweet corn, toasted coconut, cherry and ripe banana, with a perfumed edge and a faint savory olive-oil note

palate

dense and oily; maple, butterscotch and toffee turn tangy into orange, tangerine and pear, then mint, eucalyptus and licorice under peppery heat

finish

very long; vanilla, caramel and barrel char hold as the savory note returns, then it dries to toasted nuts, herbs, a wisp of smoke and oak tannin

Mash bill

64% heirloom red corn, 14% heirloom Glacier winter wheat, 14% heirloom Spooner rye, 8% malted barley. It is the house four-grain recipe, with the corn, wheat and rye grown on the Henry farm in Dane. The red corn is a 1939 University of Wisconsin variety the family re-propagated from seed Joe Henry's father had grown.

Awards

• Double Gold — San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2024
• Gold — San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2017
• Double Gold — San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2016
• Double Gold — American Distilling Institute 2017
• Double Gold — New York World Wine & Spirits Competition 2016

Why it's craft

Each bottle comes from one barrel chosen from the farm's rickhouse and bottled at the strength it came out of the cask, so every bottling differs a little. The barrels spend at least five years through the hot summers and freezing winters of an unheated barn on the Henry farm, which the family has worked since 1946. The whiskey is distilled under contract from the family's own red corn, wheat and rye.