Tasting notes

nose

Warm baking spice and toasted oak lead, with banana pudding and a faint note of cornbread underneath

palate

Chewy and dense, with chocolate-covered macaron and plenty of toasted oak

finish

Long and warming; wood spice builds again, carrying banana and cornbread through to the end

Mash bill

75% corn, 15% soft red winter wheat, 10% malted barley. The corn is yellow dent, and all three grains are grown by the Walter family on the farm around the distillery. Wheat takes the place of rye as the secondary grain, which the distillery uses to make a softer, rounder bourbon, and this is the same recipe as its four-year straight bourbon given far longer in wood.

Why it's craft

This is the oldest whiskey Whiskey Acres has bottled: four barrels aged seven, eight and nine years, blended for a small release sold online and at the farm. Fifth-generation farmers Jim and Jamie Walter and partner Nick Nagele founded the distillery in 2013 as Illinois' first estate distillery, and they grow, mash, distill and age every drop on their DeKalb County farm. The barrels rest in a metal building beside the fields, where Illinois summers and winters drive the whiskey in and out of the wood.