Tasting notes

nose

Caramel, toffee and dried red fruit over toasted oak, with red apple, cinnamon, sourdough, summer fruit and a little hay

palate

Vanilla cream and caramel chews, then toasted oak, butterscotch, charred marshmallow and orange peel, with gentle rye spice and white peppercorn

finish

Long and warm; rye spice, vanilla, oak, allspice and sour cherry, with a touch of leather

Mash bill

Corn, rye, malted barley and wheat, from two mash bills combined in a proportion that is not published. One bill is 60% corn, 20% rye and 20% malted barley; the other is 51% corn, 20% rye, 20% malted barley and 9% wheat. The Huber family grows the corn, rye and wheat on its own farm, non-GMO, and buys the malted barley locally. Both are sweet mashes, fermented for seven days in closed-top stainless steel.

Why it's craft

Starlight belongs to the Huber family, who have farmed at Starlight, Indiana, since Simon Huber settled there in 1843. This bottle is the family's bonded bourbon, a blend of barrels from its two mash bills made from corn, rye and wheat the family grows itself. It ages in the old rickhouse on the farm, and the distillery distills on copper pot stills and ferments as a sweet mash, which few American whiskey makers do. The family opened the distillery in 2001 and began making bourbon in 2013.