Tasting notes

nose

Sweet pipe tobacco and candied peanut with a touch of almond, vanilla bean and vanilla ice cream, then ripe grape and dark, wine-soaked fruit, opening toward bread pudding, buttered toast and applewood

palate

Rich and coating; a burnt brownie edge, mocha and toffee, cut by candied orange peel and a jammy mix of pear, apple and cranberry, with sweet clove, graham cracker and peanut butter

finish

Long and rustic; pipe tobacco, dried tobacco leaf and charred applewood linger, ending on an old, slightly funky note

Mash bill

Corn, rye and malted barley in Peerless's standard bourbon recipe, whose proportions the distillery has not published. Distilled a decade before release, it comes from the single bourbon mash bill Peerless used for all of its bourbon before the High Rye recipe arrived. The mash is sweet mash, started from fresh water and grain each batch.

Why it's craft

Henry Kraver's Old Reserve is the first Peerless bottle with an age statement, and its ten years count the time since Kraver's descendants restarted the distillery. Corky Taylor, Kraver's great-grandson, and his son Carson rebuilt Peerless in downtown Louisville under DSP-KY-50, the permit number Kraver's Henderson distillery held; every barrel here was distilled in that building, not bought in. The bourbon is sweet mash, double-distilled on a Vendome copper column still, and bottled at barrel proof.