The boom era of the bourbon bro has seen specific bourbon subgenres surge in popularity over the last few years, the most notable of which have been wheated bourbons—that is, bourbon that replaces the traditional rye portion of the mash bill with wheat instead. In a general sense, this is often said to produce whiskeys with sweeter, fruitier flavors and more full textures in comparison with spicier rye, but I find these generalizations to be potential pitfalls for the consumer who quickly expects all bourbons with wheat or rye recipes to follow basic archetypes. Suffice to say, this is not the case—while Maker’s Mark and Heaven Hill (Larceny) may produce two of the most widely consumed wheated bourbons on the market, I don’t find those two products to taste particularly similar to one another. Nor can one really look at any distillery’s mash bill and truly know what a bottle will taste like until you investigate for yourself—there are simply too many variables that can impact flavor.
And that’s assuming the distilleries are working with relatively similar grains in the first place, which isn’t always the case. Kentucky’s New Riff Distilling in particular has had an interest in recent years in reviving and working with various heirloom grain species such as Balboa Rye or Yellow Leaming corn, most of which are less efficient in terms of yield, but produce unique flavors. The distillery has now turned that experimental eye toward the hype of wheated bourbon, with the inaugural limited release of Red Turkey Wheat, a bottled-in-bond bourbon using the heirloom wheat variety of the same name. As the company puts it:
“Just like heirloom tomatoes, heirloom grains offer flavors and aromas that are distinct from — and often simply better than — modern hybridized grain varieties,” said New Riff co-founder Jay Erisman. “We enjoy helping to preserve these old grains, but the real reason we do it is for the flavor in the glass. We wondered what wheated bourbon would’ve tasted like 100 years ago, before modern agriculture bred so much flavor out of wheat in exchange for ever-increasing yields and ease of transport and storage. To our knowledge, this is the only Kentucky sour mash wheated bourbon produced in modern times from Red Turkey Wheat. Wheated bourbon is very popular these days, but with few exceptions it all uses modern hybrid wheat varieties.”
So the obvious question, then, is what the heirloom wheat brings to the proceedings. It makes up 25% of the mashbill on Red Turkey Wheat, with the remaining 70% corn and 5% malted barley. The whiskey is aged “at least 5 years” and carries the bottled-in-bond designation and 100 proof. It’s technically “limited release,” but has a more-than-fair $50 MSRP. It seems like a concept set up to be a year-round release, but one wonders if New Riff simply doesn’t have the inventory to make that happen at the moment.