BAWC

Issue No. 141 —

Willett Exploratory Cask Finish (XCF) Version 1.0

Willett XCF

This review us based on the col­lec­tive notes from a Bal­ti­more Amer­i­can Whiskey Club (BAWC) tast­ing con­duct­ed on Dec. 6th, 2014. Attend­ing mem­bers were Josh Sul­li­van, PJ Sul­li­van, Owen Lang, Justin Custer, Devin Byrnes & Steven Sil­berg. Writ­ten by PJ Sullivan.

Dis­tillery: Mid­west Grain Prod­ucts (MGP) of Lawrence­burg, Indi­ana & Wil­lett Dis­till­ing Co. of Bard­stown, Kentucky

Proof: 103.4

Age: 7 years, 3 months

Col­or: Deep Cop­per / Chest­nut (1.0)

Price: $140

I love that the Wil­lett team is get­ting cre­ative with this new Explorato­ry Cask Fin­ish (XCF) prod­uct line. Ver­sion 1.0 is a sev­en-year-old rye fin­ished in Cura­cao casks. The rye was dis­tilled by MGP of Indi­ana (I know, I know…) and then aged in Wil­let­t’s ware­hous­es for sev­en years in Amer­i­can white oak bar­rels with a #4 char. Drew Kulsveen, the mas­ter dis­tiller at Wil­lett, had bar­rels shipped from France that had pre­vi­ous­ly aged Cura­cao. Cura­cao is aged in used bour­bon bar­rels before being sweet­ened and mixed with Cognac. So you can see how this would make a good pair­ing. The sev­en-year-old rye was fin­ished in these Cura­cao bar­rels for 90 days and then the small batch was bot­tled into only 6,912 bottles.

Nose: Mar­malade is the pre­dom­i­nate smell here. We also noticed a lot of herbal, flo­ral, and earthy notes like men­thol, euca­lyp­tus, agave, and fennel.

Palate: We did­n’t get as much orange in the palate, sur­pris­ing­ly. The herbal and med­i­c­i­nal notes stuck around. We were also throw­ing around terms like “Rico­la” and “can­dy you’d expect your grand­moth­er to pull from the bot­tom of her purse” (this is a com­pli­ment if you did­n’t know).

Fin­ish: The herbal tones car­ry all the way through. It fin­ish­es with a bit­ter­sweet orange rind, Amaro-like, thickness.

Flavor-Wheel-Willett-XCF-Version-1.0 (1)

In a Word: Orange

Con­clu­sion: This one gets cre­ativ­i­ty points for sure. It’s very unique. We feel like the fla­vors from the cask fin­ish pair well with the sev­en year rye. It’s a lot like an amaro, so it’s a great after meal treat. In the end, it’s a bit over­priced. $140 is a lot to shell out. Of course you’re pay­ing for its rar­i­ty, but we’d like to see this come in around $50-$70. Def­i­nite­ly worth try­ing and makes a nice col­lec­tors item. We are real­ly look­ing for­ward to ver­sion 2.0.

Rat­ing: 3 out of 5 Stars

Comments are closed.