Tasting notes

nose

warm fresh bread and honey with anise, apple and stone fruit, over sweet corn and a chocolate-batter richness

palate

oily and full, with molasses, clove and ginger, a cooling eucalyptus note, a little citrus and grains of paradise, and dark chocolate with raisin and prune underneath

finish

long, coming back on the back of the tongue with black pepper, tobacco leaf and mint cream, then settling into sweet oak, cocoa and dried fruit as it dries

Mash bill

55% corn, 35% rye, 10% Victory malt. Victory is a beer malt, and the distiller uses beer malts like it to push the whiskey toward an Indiana style of bourbon distinct from Kentucky's. The large rye share gives this high-rye bourbon its spice. Two yeasts work the mash: a house strain chosen for strong grain character and a brandy yeast that brings fruity, herbal and spicy notes and a fuller body.

Why it's craft

This bottled-in-bond bourbon is double pot distilled from a high-rye mash, barreled at 105 proof and aged four years in a ventilated barn beside the stills. Spirits of French Lick opened in 2016, when John and Kimberly Doty expanded their family's French Lick Winery, and it calls itself the largest pot-still distillery in Indiana. The house mashes, ferments and distills its own grain and does not chill filter its spirits.