Tasting notes

nose

honey and vanilla over sweet grain, with candied cherry, apricot, maple and a light thread of oak

palate

honey, sweet corn and malt, moving to baking spice and butterscotch at the back

finish

lingering; warm oak and black pepper take over as the sweetness fades

Mash bill

70% corn, 25% rye, 5% malted barley. All of it is New York-grown grain, and a quarter of the mash is rye, a high share for bourbon. The water comes from a spring on the distillery's own farm and rises through dolostone, a limestone-like rock rich in calcium carbonate and magnesium.

Awards

• Silver Medal — Bartender Spirits Awards 2023

Why it's craft

Dutchess Private Reserve was the first whiskey the Coughlin family bottled, in October 2013, when the business was still called Millbrook Distillery and worked out of a 600-square-foot barn. Paul and Carol Ann Coughlin had bought a former beef farm in Stanfordville and started the distillery under New York's farm distillery license, which ties production to New York-grown ingredients. Today the bourbon is mashed, distilled, aged and bottled on that farm, the family still owns it, and the spent grain goes to local cattle farmers.