Tasting notes

nose

Toasted oak and yellow cake with vanilla, spiced honey, buttered toffee and a little plum and date

palate

Caramel and butterscotch, honey and chocolate cake, with dried apricot, gentle rye spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, tobacco leaf and roasted nuts

finish

Long; spiced honey and butterscotch linger over lightly charred oak, tapering to a soft white-pepper tingle

Mash bill

At least 51% rye; the rest of the grain bill is not published. It starts as Peerless Small Batch Rye, a sweet mash cooked from fresh water and grain for every batch, and only the second barrel sets it apart.

Why it's craft

Peerless followed its Toasted Bourbon of 2024 with this rye in 2025, running its Small Batch Rye through the same second step: a medium-toast barrel from Kelvin Cooperage, chosen by the distillery because lighter toast brings fewer tannins and more vanilla. The rye itself is made under one roof in Louisville: milled, sweet-mashed, fermented and double-distilled on a Vendome copper column still, then bottled at barrel proof. The Taylor family, descendants of 1889 Peerless owner Henry Kraver, rebuilt the distillery and hold the original permit number, DSP-KY-50.