Wilderness Trail Bottled in Bond Wheated (Yellow Label)
Bottled-in-bond (At least 4 years old, but the producer claims it is 5 – 6 years Old)
100
64% Corn | 24% Wheat | 12% Malted Barley
This bourbon smells grassy, with an earthy “funk”, before giving way to your typical vanilla and butterscotch notes.
Wilderness Trail is currently one of the ‘unbung’ heroes of the Bourbon Industry. Founders Dr. Pat Heist and Mr. Baker are longtime friends who met after joining a rock band together in the late 1990’s. From there, Dr. Heist and Mr. Baker used their 28 years of fermentation experience (combined) to found FermSolutions in 2006. FermSolutions actively serves the microbiological needs of brewers, distillers, and biofuel producers, by performing analysis, product development, and yeast identification. Today, FermSolutions high-quality yeast is known industry wide, and has been adopted by many commercial distilleries across KY and the USA.
Using their proprietary yeast and sweet mashing (meaning no ‘backset’ or distilled grains are added to the mash as is typical in the whiskey industry) methods, Dr. Heist and Mr. Baker began producing bourbon in 2012. With these unique production methods, Wilderness Trail is able to produce high quality craft bourbon that is complex and flavorful. In those days Wilderness Trail was producing roughly a barrel a day, now production runs 24 hours a day and produces roughly 80,000 barrels of bourbon a year. Their covert growth in the craft distilling space and contract production sector eventually led to Campari (Wild Turkey, Skyy Vodka, Aperol, Grand Marnier, etc.) purchasing a 70% stake in the company for $420 Million. Additionally, Campari retains the option to purchase the remaining 30% stake in 2031 for $210 Million.