Tastes

creamy peanut butter, cocoa puffs, marshmallow, vanilla, caramel, oak, light honey, light red apple

Background - The Starlight Maple product is a blend of two different mashbills: the 3-grain mashbill (60% corn, 20% rye, 20% malted barley) and the 4-grain mashbill (51% corn, 20% rye, 20% malted barley, 9% wheat) in an unknown ratio. The result is then finished in maple syrup barrels. - Although it is technically a wheated bourbon, it is also high rye — the malted barley helps smooth and mellow that out. The sweetness here is far more subtle than a typical wheater [without rye]. Review - I'm drinking a Starlight Maple single barrel pick by The Party Source [1] with a 5 year age statement on the bottle. - Maple, toffee, brown sugar, milk chocolate / light cocoa, very light citrus note (orange / lemon / lemongrass), apple juice, pear juice, light nutty note, smooth and elegant overall, finish is long and very spicy, tannins are strong. Notes - This is my first experience with Starlight. While I like it, I'm also curious to try the unfinished juice as well as the various other finishes available (double oaked, rum finished, bordeaux finished, triple sec finished, VDN finished). [1]: https://thepartysource.com/Starlight%20Huber's%20Maple%20Syrup%20Finished%20Bourbon%20TPS%20Private%20Barrel

This one benefits heavily from resting in the glass after a fresh pour — I recommend sipping slowly to appreciate that! Hot apple cider, red apples / honeycrisp apples, baked apples, vanilla, a hint of sweet cornbread, mint (spearmint), spicy wood, roasted nuts, walnuts, cinnamon / clove / nutmeg, definitely some heat for sure particularly on the finish, dash of cigar ash / *very* spicy on the finish. It's so apple-forward, that I checked the bottle twice to make sure it wasn't finished in something like apple brandy barrels as their namesake "Watershed Bourbon" [1] is (the BiB release is not finished). A tad youthful but also more complex than anticipated for its 4-year age statement. It also kinda reminds me of RR SIB picks in flavor profile but how they might be at a much younger age. I would definitely like to keep trying Watershed's juice as it reaches the ~6–7-year age range. Overall, I'm between 3.75 and 4.0 on this one: "3.75+". For a popular comparison, I like this better than WSR but not as much as OWA / KC SBS / RR SIB picks. I understand why it won a Gold at the 2022 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. That said, the flavor profile here is fairly unique, and it's a young craft product (definitely not for everyone), but it's clear that Watershed is already onto something good. If you tend to like spicy apple and vanilla-forward flavor profiles, then I recommend grabbing a bottle. One closing point is that I wish Watershed would disclose the mashbill here. It's different and interesting and they have experimented with uncommon bourbon grains like spelt in the past, so I'm curious to learn what they landed on here. As an aside, the Watershed Nocino [2], a walnut liquer, is a very interesting and unique spirit that makes for a fun Old Fashioned. Its distribution is limited, but I recommend giving it a shot if you can find it. [1]: https://distiller.com/spirits/watershed-distillery-bourbon [2]: https://distiller.com/spirits/watershed-nocino