Bourbon
Bird Dog
Bird Dog: Hailing from Bowling Green, Kentucky, Bird Dog has a line of craft Kentucky bourbons – Small Batch, 10-year-old, and Select Stock – that are crafted with attention to detail and a commitment to quality. Additionally, Bird Dog is also available in a wide variety of flavors – Blackberry, Peach, Apple, Strawberry, Ruby Red Grapefruit, Hot Cinnamon, Jalapeno Honey, Chocolate, Spiced, Maple and as a Blended Whiskey. All are blended with the finest Kentucky and natural flavors.
Bulleit
From Bulleit Frontier Whiskey in Kentucky, Bulleit Bourbon was inspired by the whiskey pioneered by Augustus Bulleit over 150 years ago. Today it’s a high-rye, award-winning whiskey with unparalleled spice and complexity. That complexity comes from its unique blend of rye, corn, and barley malt, along with special strains of yeast and pure, Kentucky-limestone-filtered water. Due to its especially high rye-content, Bulleit Bourbon has a bold, spicy character with a finish that’s distinctively clean and smooth. It’s medium-amber in color, with gentle, sweet oak aromas. The taste is smooth and includes tones of maple, oak, and nutmeg.
Calumet
Calumet: From one of the most exalted vestiges of the horse racing world comes Calumet Farm Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey. This family of super premium bourbons proves once and for all that the combination of passion, hard work and honor, produces greatness. Calumet Single Rack Black Bourbon is aged to perfection for over 10 years, then bottled from an extreme small batch of 19 center cut, hand selected barrels.
Four Roses
Four Roses Bourbon – Using up to 10 of our unique Bourbon recipes, this smooth and mellow Bourbon has hints of crisp fruit, caramel and vibrant spice with a long and soft finish. 80 proof. 40% alcohol/volume.
Four Roses Small Batch – This perfectly balanced, small batch Bourbon combines four of our unique Bourbon recipes and has rich, creamy, ripened berries for your palate with a smooth and long finish. 90 proof. 45% alcohol/volume.
Four Roses Single Barrel – This complex, full-bodied and surprisingly smooth Bourbon combines our high-rye mashbill with our delicate fruity yeast for a rich, long finish that’s unbelievably mellow. 100 proof. 50% alcohol/volume.
Russell’s Reserve 10yr Old Bourbon
Master distillers and legendary bourbon-makers Jimmy and Eddie Russell use all 100 years of their combined experience to artfully craft Russell’s Reserve 10 Year Old Bourbon. Hand-selected from the center cut, aged in the deepest No. 4 “alligator char” barrels, and bottled at 90 proof, this small batch bourbon delivers rich, spicy caramel and vanilla flavors with a uniquely smooth finish. (45% ABV / 90 Proof)
Wild Turkey
Wild Turkey is the Real Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. Wild Turkey products are aged in new American white oak barrels with the deepest #4 “alligator” char, giving them a rich russet color while carrying full flavors of vanilla and smooth caramel. The father-son Master Distiller team of Jimmy Russell and Eddie Russell have more than 100 years combined experience and with that experience comes the knowledge that they make their bourbons and ryes the right way, every time.
Wyoming Whiskey
Wyoming. Family. Whiskey. In that order. Wyoming Whiskey isn’t owned by some beverage giant or traded on the Big Board. It’s an independent, family-owned, whiskey maker with a world-class distillery in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming. As they put it, their company and products are a “collaboration between our partners and 97,818 square miles of Wyoming.” The state defines them; it’s in their blood and in their whiskey. After all, they’ve lived and worked the land as ranchers for five generations. While their original, flagship product is their award-winning Small Batch Bourbon, their whiskies also include Single Barrel Bourbon, which represents the top 1% of barrels found in their warehouses, Outryder, a straight American whiskey with a high rye content from two separate mash bills, and Double Cask which is a Pedro Ximenez sherry cask finished bourbon. All of their grains are non-GMO and grown in Wyoming. Wyoming Whiskey is truly “The Whiskey of the West”.
Heaven’s Door
Heaven’s Door is a collection of super-premium craft American whiskeys, created in partnership with Bob Dylan. It’s his first and only brand partnership, featuring an ever-evolving portfolio of handcrafted whiskeys in collaboration with different master distillers and blenders from across the country. As the legendary musician explains, “We wanted to create a collection of American whiskeys that, in their own way, tell a story” (something Mr. Dylan knows a little something about).
As an opening act, Heaven’s Door includes a Straight Tennessee Bourbon, a Double Barrel Whiskey, and a Straight Rye Whiskey finished in “cigar” barrels from Vosges, France. Dylan’s artwork is on the packaging, this year featuring his distinctive iron gates he created in his studio, Black Buffalo Ironworks. Next year they’ll introduce The Bootleg Series, showcasing Dylan’s paintings on proprietary bottles, available in limited quantities. In fall of 2020, Heaven’s Door will open its distillery and brand experience center in a 140-year-old church in Nashville, where Dylan recorded four albums. (We have no doubt we’ll be knock-knock-knocking on its door soon.)
Jefferson’s
Known for its “ridiculously-small batch” bourbon, Jefferson’s was founded by Trey Zoeller and his dad Chet, a famous bourbon historian. Apparently, they’re continuing a family tradition that dates back to Trey’s 8th-generation grandmother who was arrested in 1799 for the “production and sales of spirituous liquors.” They chose the name of our third U.S. president because their brand embodies his curiosity and experimental spirit. (We’re thinking TJ probably didn’t know their great-great-great-etc. grandma, but who knows.)
Best-known for their Jefferson’s Very Small Batch Bourbon, they take up to four different Kentucky straight bourbon whiskies of different ages and marry them together. Fun (incredible) fact: Partnering with OCEARCH, a globally recognized nonprofit, Jefferson’s is helping save sharks while aging bourbon at the same time, strapping barrels of whiskey to the bow of their research ship and aging the whiskey more quickly–due to the constant movement–while tracking great whites and tiger sharks. Perhaps it adds more bite?
Maker’s Mark
Maker’s Mark Straight Bourbon Whisky is, if nothing else, a true family business, from founder T.W. Samuels (uncle to Frank and Jesse James) to current COO, Rob Samuels. While most distilleries use a modern hammer to break up their grains, Maker’s uses an old, antique roller mill—which isn’t very efficient, but it’s a lot less likely to scorch the grain and create a bitter taste. (While Frank and Jesse were known for being fast, we’re betting Uncle T.W. lived a lot longer being anything but.)
The first bottle of Maker’s wasn’t available for market till fall of 1958, after six summers of aging–hand-dipped in their signature red wax, of course. Today they still produce their bourbon in small batches of no more than 1,000 gallons each–something we find ourselves appreciating every time we enjoy its rich, full flavor and distinctively smooth, warm finish.
Old Elk
Based in Fort Collins, Colorado, Old Elk Blended Straight Bourbon Whiskey uses four times more malted barley than conventional recipes and a proprietary Slow Cut™ proofing process. This elongated process enhances the bourbon’s flavors due to the full barrel proof bourbon being cut, then left to rest, and repeated. While traditional proofing takes 24-48 hours, this technique takes significantly longer, allowing the flavors to marry between stages–marriage is never something to hurry, in our opinion–creating an overall smoother bourbon whiskey. (Here’s to slow processes and slow sipping.)
But the real difference with Old Elk lies in their collaboration with Master Distiller Greg Metze, who has been called “perhaps the greatest rye distiller of our time.” (Metze is one of our heroes–he’s responsible for the majority of rye whiskey on shelves today.) The additional malted barley in Old Elk’s recipe, combined with spicy essence of clove from rye, and the traditional rich bourbon character from corn, creates the overall robust taste profile.
Smooth Ambler
After Smooth Ambler began merchant-bottling Old Scout whiskey, a low-rye bourbon mash bill from Tennessee, they thought it might be interesting to blend a little of this delicious bourbon they source with the smooth and sweet wheated bourbon they distill there in West Virginia. And thus, Contradiction was born: a blend of whiskey they make, with whiskey they don’t. (It’s a contradiction, get it?)
The resulting blend combines straight whiskeys of different ages, with the majority whiskey always more than 9 years old. The taste is full of oak, dried cherries, vanilla and cinnamon, with sweetness from the wheat and spice from the rye. Smooth Ambler is also known for the aforementioned Old Scout Single Barrel and their Big Level Bourbon, a wheated bourbon that’s 100% mashed, distilled, aged, proofed, and bottled at the Smooth Ambler distillery in West Virginia with no chill filtration. It’s no contradiction to say that these folks from Greenbrier County are turning out some exceptional Appalachian whiskey.
Widow Jane
Widow Jane’s artisanal distillery is situated in heart of Red Hook, Brooklyn. They take pride in creating whiskey with taste that’s “as intense as our New York home.” They distill using only the finest, non-GMO ingredients sourced from nearby farms, while scouring the country for the finest barrels of bourbon and cutting them with their unique limestone-filtered water from the “Widow Jane” mines of Rosendale in upstate New York. It’s this unique water with its unusually high mineral content that enhances the natural flavors of their whiskey. (Fun fact: These same mines supplied the limestone used to build the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the White House.)
Widow Jane 10-Year-Old Single-Barrel Bourbon is their signature bourbon, hand-assembled in Brooklyn using the richest and rarest straight bourbons, only in extremely small, 5-barrel batches, non-chill filtered and proofed with the aforementioned limestone-filtered mineral water.
