Tasting notes

nose

soft nuts and malted grain with light caramel and milk chocolate, apricot, apple and dried tropical fruit, brown spice, a savory mint note and freshly toasted oak

palate

caramel-coated nuts and dark chocolate dried by cocoa powder and brown spice, with black pepper up front, cherry toward the back, a trace of toasted coconut and bright oak

finish

lasts for minutes as the heat fades fast; cocoa, chocolate malt and nuts stay, gently sweet, with a hint of leather

Mash bill

51% malted barley, 47% corn, 2% rye. The malt share sits just over the legal minimum for a malt whiskey and almost all the rest is corn, so the recipe stays close to a bourbon's. Woodford Reserve says the malted barley base amplifies the nutty character found in its bourbon.

Why it's craft

Unlike a typical all-malt whiskey, this Kentucky straight malt keeps corn in the recipe and ages in new charred oak, which Woodford Reserve calls the malt whiskey for bourbon drinkers. Keeping the house barrels and proof and changing the grain lets the malted barley amplify the nutty side of the Woodford flavor. Woodford Reserve, owned by Brown-Forman, runs one of the longest fermentations in the industry and ages its barrels in heat-cycled warehouses in Versailles, Kentucky.