It will likely not surprise one to learn that Louisville, Kentucky isn’t exactly a difficult place to find whiskey in. Beyond the big name distilleries that call the immediate Louisville area their home, there’s a swatch of microdistilleries making bourbon and rye here, in addition to brewers and distillers focused on other products. Bourbon is ubiquitous; people expect to find it wherever they go. And for a small distillery like Copper & Kings, that means playing the game and meeting people where they are. The brandy-focused distillery, tasting room and restaurant recently made the jump, releasing their first Copper & Kings Bourbon, while fusing their production techniques with their brandy focus.
Copper & Kings had already been a member of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, but can now offer the real thing, made on-premise. Their debut bourbon is a sourced product, unsurprisingly, from three different mashbills that range from 10-21% rye. More genuinely surprising is the fair amount of quite well-aged whiskey included in that blend, which is 64% 5-year-old bourbon, 24% 10-year-old bourbon and 12% 15-year-old bourbon. That’s a pretty generous portion of extra-aged whiskey for what could easily have just been a modestly aged selection. Nor is Copper & Kings done with just blending, as the product is then finished in the company’s American Apple Brandy barrels for another year. During this period, it’s also bombarded with noise in a process the company refers to as “sonic aging,” which can’t help but recall Metallica’s use of similar principles for their BLACKENED Whiskey. In Copper & Kings’ case, they describe the process as the following:
We have 5 major sub-woofers in our basement maturation cellar. The principle of Sonic Aging (maturation) is not vibration but PULSATION. We pulse (a bass note in particular) music through the cellar. The alcohol molecule being less dense than a water molecule starts to move away from the pulse, and collide with other alcohol molecules inside the barrels which eventually collide with the barrel wall, they slide up the wall, which starts to create a “distillate wave” inside the barrel resulting in increased frequency of contact over time between the distillate with the barrel walls and in our opinion enhances maturation.
Well alright then. It remains to be seen what kind of character this yields, exactly, but the resulting bourbon blend is bottled at 55.5% ABV (111 proof), with an MSRP of $65. And honestly, given the average final age statement, proof point and apple brandy finish, that seems like a more than fair price point, particularly for a small distillery.
So with all that said, let’s get to tasting.
On the nose, Copper & Kings Bourbon initially displays both caramel and a more honeyed sweetness, along with sawdust and delicate fruit impressions of apricot and baked apple. I’m also getting hints of roasted nuts, though overall this is initially striking me as a fairly muted nose for a bourbon with this kind of finish–not to mention a pretty stiff 111 proof. All in all, I was expecting the nose to be a bit bolder here.
However, on the palate this whiskey suddenly comes to life. Here it’s much more vivaciously fruit and spice-forward, with a huge amount of cinnamon brown sugar being one of the first things to register. Orange zest offers brightness, while apricot jam a fruity, slightly pithy sweetness. This really embraces a spicy oak dimension at the same time, however, carrying heavy baking spice, though with enough honey to round things out. There is a whole lot of citrus to be found here, and the overall impression becomes an interesting interplay between elements like flamed orange, honey and bold oak spice, with trailing hot pepper. All said, it drinks pretty easy for the proof, and is generally a lot more compelling on the palate than it initially was on the nose. Perhaps I just didn’t give it quite enough time to open up there.
At the end of the day, this is an impressive first foray into the bourbon world, and I think it would make for a really nice old fashioned in particular. The oak-driven spiciness is a particular highlight, and I still think the MSRP represents a pretty solid value for what you’re finding in this bottle. Or in other words, there are other small distilleries charging a whole lot more for their first sourced bourbon, without even bothering to conceptually make it their own. Copper & Kings pulls it off in fine style.
Distillery: Copper & Kings
City: Louisville, KY
Style: Blend of Kentucky straight bourbon whiskeys
ABV: 55.5% (111 proof)
Availability: 750 ml bottles, $65 MSRP
Jim Vorel is a Paste staff writer and resident beer and liquor geek. You can follow him on Twitter for more drink writing.