Tasting notes

nose

vanilla wafer, buttered cupcake, warm peach and apple peel, with frosted sugar cookie and dried apricot and a cool cucumber note at the edge

palate

toffee pudding, caramel corn and apple pie crust, brightened by lemon rind and rhubarb tartness; candied pecan, graham cracker and nutmeg follow, with the grain staying up front

finish

long and dry; grapefruit peel and sour cherry, fading to a faint espresso note

Mash bill

60% corn, 20% heirloom wheat, 10% heirloom rye, 10% heirloom malted barley. It is the same four-grain recipe as Laws' flagship bourbon, with the wheat, rye and barley grown as heirloom varieties by two Colorado family farms. Laws cooks each grain to bring out its own character and ferments the mash as an open-air sour mash.

Why it's craft

Founder's Select is the newest bottling of Laws' four-grain bourbon, aged at least four years in new charred oak and bottled at a lower strength than the flagship. Al Laws founded the distillery in Denver in 2011, and every drop it has bottled was distilled there; it waited three years before selling its first bottle. Its corn, wheat, rye and barley come from two Colorado family farms.