Tasting notes

nose

baked apple, pear and banana with cinnamon and cedar, a delicate floral note, vanilla bean and brown sugar

palate

spiced applesauce and toasted coconut over earthy mint and cocoa nib, with caramel and dark chocolate below

finish

dry; cocoa nib stays quietly while apple peel lingers longest

Mash bill

52% wheat, 20% malted barley, 20% corn, 8% rye. Woodford Reserve based this wheat-led recipe on historical wheat whiskeys while keeping the corn, rye and malt of its bourbon in smaller shares. Malted barley makes up a fifth of the grain, as much as the corn, and the distillery credits the wheat-forward recipe with the fruit and floral character of the whiskey.

Why it's craft

Woodford Reserve Wheat makes wheat the main grain, at 52%, and gives a fifth of the recipe to malted barley, drawing on historical wheat whiskey recipes. It matures in new charred oak barrels made to the house's toast and char specifications and is bottled at 90.4 proof like the house bourbon, so the grain recipe is what sets it apart. Woodford Reserve, a Brown-Forman distillery, sits on a National Historic Landmark site in Versailles, Kentucky.