Join us this weekend for a bourbon tasting! We'll be sampling originals from Basil Haden, Knob Creek, and Maker's Mark, this Saturday 3-6pm. As always, it's free to taste and all featured bottles will be discounted during the tasting event!
Artfully aged at a relatively mild 80 proof, Basil Hayden's® is as novel and delectable a bourbon whiskey as it was when the master distiller rolled out his first barrel over 200 years ago. Marked by a rich cascade of aromas and flavors, Basil Hayden's® is still a small batch bourbon, but with broader appeal. And just as it was in 1796, the only 'rule' to enjoying our Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey is that it should be done responsibly.
Color: Golden amber.
Aroma: Spice, tea, hint of peppermint.
Taste: Spicy, peppery, honey, light-bodied, gentle bite.
Finish: Dry, clean, brief.
When Booker Noe fathered the small batch movement over two decades ago, he created Knob Creek to restore the standards of pre-prohibition bourbon. The result is an undeniably big, full flavor that strikes your senses with a maple sugar aroma, distinctive sweetness and a rich, woody, caramel flavor with a long, smooth finish.
Knob Creek is crafted in limited quantities, aged 9 years and placed in only the deepest charred American Oak barrels to fully draw out the natural sugars. Then we bottle it at an honest 100 proof to reflect the flavor, strength and patience that defined pre-prohibition whiskey.
Once you've grown into this full flavor, no other bourbon will do. That's when your palate refuses to take a step back and you're ready for what Booker Noe envisioned true bourbon to be.
Make a bolder classic cocktail. Sip it neat. Open it up with a drop of water or filtered ice cubes. Enjoy it in whatever damn way you please.
We believe Maker's Mark is the only bourbon distillery to use pure, iron-free limestone spring water exclusively, not city, well or river water. Our source is a 10-acre limestone spring-fed lake at the distillery.
We are very choosy about selecting the grains that go into our whisky. First, we use yellow corn and red winter wheat from specially selected small farm cooperatives, all of which are located within the limestone geology near the distillery. This wheat gives our whisky its soft, mellow taste. And we only use naturally malted barley (that has no enzyme enhancing gibberellic acid).When our grain is delivered, we check it from top to bottom. If it does not meet our rigid standards the shipment is not accepted. And this really does happen from time to time.
We are among the few remaining bourbon distillers that propagates its own yeast for fermentation with cultures that we can trace back to the pre-prohibition era. We also use the traditional sour mash method, similar to making sourdough bread, where we always leave over some culture from one batch to start another.
Our rare cypress fermentation tanks are historically irreplaceable. Some of the planks are more than 100 years old. Cypress was chosen for fermentation before modern stainless steel was available because it didn't contribute iron or taste to the final product. While we don't believe that cypress affects the process in any way, we continue to use some of these fermenters to give our visitors a sense of how the process used to look.
Maker's Mark is currently the only operating bourbon distillery to make whisky in batches of less than 19 barrels -- the traditional standard for small-batch whisky.
