I had forgotten that I bought a little taster of this while traveling to this distillery, but I'm glad I did, because I despise wheat distillate in any form, but haven't had an actual high mash percentage wheat whiskey to seal the thought. I know this distillery places a lot of care into their spirits, and although there is no age statement with this and the color suggests a very young final product, a 95% mash bill of wheat should really showcase the flavor of the grain. As a side note, I did find a Distiller entry for this spirit already, but with no less than 3 discrepancies entered, found it easier to make a new, correct entry than wait for Distiller to care about quality control.
The color is golden with a hint of amber on the edges, and since their rye whiskey and bourbon from this distillery have much darker colors, I would guess this is a second or third use barrel, and not aged long enough to develop any color depth. The nose is malty like that of a single malt whiskey, but does actually have some vanilla and caramel sweetness from the barrel. There's a hint of wheat-based cereal, like Mini Wheats, and an even smaller hint of tropical fruit and banana behind that. The ethanol is slightly more potent than expected at a 90 proof point.
The body is quite light, and turns into a predicted soft, young wheat/malt flavor after a few seconds. Just when I thought this is what the flavor would be through to the finish, a spiced, slightly heavier body comes to the forefront and creates a hot rye-like spice around the tongue and the front of the gums. With so much wheat and no rye in the mash, I'm shocked that the finish burns even hotter and deeper, especially since the proof is so much lower; this easily tastes like 110 proof or more. Even with this heat, this pairs nicely with another sip, as each new sip almost "cools down" the pallete. It takes a few minutes, but there is a very minute banana/clove Hefeweizen-like whisper of a note on the deep finish.
This really was not what I was expecting for a wheat whiskey, and makes me wonder if this is an accurate representation of high percentage wheat whiskey overall. A lot of similarities to malt/barely and rye grain are both tasted and smelled, and with almost exclusively wheat in this mix, it's shocking that the softer, creamy, sweet flavors normally found in this grain are actually the least dominant. I'm not confident on how this would taste when mixed, so I wouldn't buy a full size bottle, not at least until I've tried a few more high percentage mash wheat whiskeys, which unfortunately are much harder to find in general, let alone in small 50ml bottles or at a bar where they're cheaper to sample.
Create Account
or
Sign in
to comment on this review