Tasting notes

nose

bready, grainy and doughy, with clove-studded orange, orange marmalade, pralines, spun-sugar sweetness and dark fruit

palate

chewy and zesty with bright citrus, stewed dark fruit and caramel, moderately sweet, edging into black cherry skin and a hint of cinnamon

finish

very long; nutty grain comes first, then bright citrus, drying to dark fruit skin with a trace of brown sugar

Mash bill

70% corn, 25% Red Turkey Wheat, 5% malted barley. Red Turkey is an heirloom wheat dating to the 1870s, grown in the American Midwest and kept alive by farmers, bakers and distillers because it was bred for flavor, not yield. Swapping the house rye for this wheat gives a softer, sweeter bourbon with bready grain and citrus notes. It is a sour mash bourbon; New Riff began distilling it in 2016.

Awards

• Gold — Barleycorn Awards 2025

Why it's craft

Instead of a modern wheat variety, this bourbon uses Red Turkey, a 19th-century heirloom wheat grown for flavor, for a quarter of the recipe. New Riff first put it down in 2016 and released it in 2021, and it remains a bottled-in-bond whiskey: one distilling season, one distillery, at least four years under government bond, 100 proof. The distillery, opened in 2014, ferments in open tanks on a sour mash and bottles without chill filtration.