Tasting notes

nose

browned butter, toasted almond and warm croissant, with black cherry and vanilla underneath

palate

cinnamon bread with a honey glaze, then nutmeg, soft leather, tobacco and a touch of chocolate, with plum and caramel building in the middle

finish

long, with white pepper, dark cherry and crème brûlée, then plum and caramel fading against a faint grassy note

Mash bill

75% Bloody Butcher corn, 20% malted wheat, 5% malted barley. Bloody Butcher is a red heirloom dent corn grown on the Nethery family's home farms in Shelbyville, which the distillery credits with an earthier, sweeter and nuttier spirit. Malted wheat takes the place of the malted rye in the house's Bottled-in-Bond recipe, while the corn and barley stay at the same 75% and 5%.

Why it's craft

This wheated bourbon carries a six-year age statement and came out in May 2024, eight years after Jeptha Creed opened in Shelbyville. The distillery is owned by Joyce Nethery and her daughter Autumn; the family grows the Bloody Butcher corn on its own farms and does the planting, fermenting, distilling and bottling itself, which Joyce calls making bourbon "the most difficult way possible."