Tasting notes

nose

Caramel and honey dusted with nutmeg, then fennel seed, cardamom and a faint thread of black tea over pear and apple

palate

Creamy and round, opening on caramel and vanilla before green apple, mint, graham cracker and ginger arrive, with cardamom running through the middle and a grainy cornmeal sweetness

finish

Medium-long, starting on toasted walnut and caramel, turning sweet and fruity toward ground cherry, then drying out with white pepper and a little tobacco leaf at the close

Mash bill

60% corn, 17% wheat, 13% oats, 10% caramel malt. Oats were once common in bourbon recipes but are now rare, and the distillery uses them for a gentle sweetness and a buttery, creamy texture. The mash is fermented with two proprietary yeast strains chosen to bring out the grain's sweet, mildly fruity notes.

Why it's craft

This is a four-grain bourbon with 13% oats, a grain that has nearly disappeared from bourbon recipes, distilled twice in pot stills and laid down at a low barrel entry proof. Spirits of French Lick is a family-owned distillery founded in 2016 next to the Doty family's winery in southern Indiana, and it mashes, ferments, distills, ages and bottles everything itself. Being bottled in bond, it comes from a single distilling season and spent at least four years in barrel under federal supervision.