Tasting notes

nose

dark caramel and malted milk balls, grilled pineapple and a thread of sweet smoke

palate

candied sugar and buttery pie crust, roasted walnut, molasses and oiled leather

finish

semisweet chocolate and black tea leaf over firm oak tannin, fading to cedar embers and smoke

Mash bill

75% corn, 25% peated malted barley. The corn is organic and non-GMO, grown in the Finger Lakes by Lakeview Organic, the farm that has supplied Kings County since its first day. The barley is Chariot malt from the UK maltster Thomas Fawcett, lightly peated to 15 ppm with peat from the Aberdeen region of Scotland. With five to eight years in oak, the smoke from that malt turns lighter and earthier, where the 90-proof bottling leans toward barbecue sweetness.

Awards

• Double Gold — San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2026

Why it's craft

This is the first barrel-strength release of Kings County's peated bourbon and the oldest batch the distillery has put out, drawn from barrels five to eight years old and bottled without water. Peated malt is a Scotch practice; here a quarter of the mash is Scottish-peated barley alongside New York organic corn. Kings County makes it all at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, taking narrow cuts on pot stills built in Scotland and Kentucky for a heavy, oily spirit. Founded in 2010, it is New York City's oldest whiskey distillery and sells only whiskey it distilled itself.