Tasting notes

nose

caramel, butterscotch and vanilla-iced coffee cake, with cinnamon, a dusting of clove and a faint wisp of cold ash

palate

creamy and thick; caramel and butterscotch lead into nutmeg, ripe peach and black walnut, with charred oak and a peppery heat building at the back

finish

medium in length; it opens sweet, turns to baking spice, oak and barrel char, then fades back to a lingering caramel sweetness

Mash bill

64% corn, 24% wheat, 12% malted barley. It is the same wheated recipe as Wilderness Trail's bonded small-batch wheater, with wheat standing where the house's high-rye bourbon uses rye, which leaves the spirit softer and richer. Like everything the distillery makes, it is a sweet mash, fermented with Wilderness Trail's own proprietary yeast strains instead of the soured backset most Kentucky bourbon uses.

Why it's craft

Each bottle is drawn from a single barrel of Wilderness Trail's wheated bourbon left to age six years, two beyond its bonded small batch, and bottled at whatever strength that barrel reached. The distillery mashes, ferments and distills everything itself in Danville, where fermentation scientists Shane Baker and Pat Heist founded it in 2012 and built it around a sweet-mash process and their own yeast strains. Campari Group bought a 70% stake in 2022 and plans to buy the remaining 30% in 2031.