Tasting notes

nose

Red fruit and a floral lift first, then orange peel, warm apple tart, cornbread and crème brûlée

palate

Soft and a little oily; sweet corn and warm pastry, with caramel, wood spice and oak gathering in the middle

finish

Light to medium in length; toasted oak gives way to green banana and caramel cream candy, fading to sweet grain and a last trace of wood spice

Mash bill

75% Bloody Butcher corn, 15% soft red winter wheat, 10% malted barley. Bloody Butcher is a dark red heirloom corn, and the Walter family grows it on the DeKalb farm around the distillery along with the wheat and barley. As in the house's other bourbons, wheat rather than rye is the secondary grain, which keeps the spice soft and lets the corn variety lead.

Why it's craft

The corn in this bottle is Bloody Butcher, a dark red heirloom variety the Walter family grows on its own fields, and it belongs to an Artisan Series that turns specialty corns from the farm into single-variety bourbons. Whiskey Acres has grown, distilled and aged its whiskey on the same DeKalb County farm since its founding in 2013, as Illinois' first estate distillery. This edition spent nearly five years in barrel and goes into the bottle without chill filtration.