A couple of years ago, I reviewed Nashville Barrel Company’s single barrel straight bourbons picked from Midwest Grain Products (MGP) in Indiana after visiting their tasting room while on vacation — and I was genuinely impressed. You can read that review here. Nashville Barrel Company is a non-distiller producer that has built its entire identity around barrel selection, and they do it well. Those earlier picks were rye-recipe MGP bourbons, the workhorse 75% corn / 21% rye / 4% malted barley mashbill that has launched a thousand NDP brands sourced from MGP. This time, however, Nashville Barrel Company went in a different direction — and picked a wheated bourbon.
MGP’s wheated bourbon mashbill swaps out the high-rye and low-rye grain bills for a softer, sweeter wheat secondary grain, and the results can be spectacular when the right barrel is chosen. The wheated MGP recipe runs approximately 51% corn / 45% wheat / 4% malted barley, making it one of the most wheat-forward mashbills in the industry. Where rye brings spice and structure, wheat brings softness, fruit, and a certain richness that rewards a high-proof cask-strength presentation. Barrel #9527 is bottled at 112.26 proof — a serious but not overwhelming cask strength — and is available directly through Nashville Barrel Company’s Shopify store, which ships to most states. That’s how I acquired this bottle, for right around a Benjamin.
My local favorite shop, Hokus Pokus, once carried a Copper & Cask MGP wheated bourbon that I found quite enjoyable, though I never wrote a review of it since it was exclusively available through Wine and Spirits Guild stores and not broadly accessible. I kept that bottle in my memory as a reference point for what MGP wheated can do. Barrel #9527 is better — and the good news is, you can actually get it.
The color is a deep, solid amber with gorgeous hints of mahogany at the edges — rich and inviting in the glass. On the swirl, big thick oily legs develop; they are a bit disorganized as they run down the glass, but unmistakably oily and suggestive of a rich, viscous pour.
On the nose is one of the more wonderful things I have encountered in a wheated bourbon in some time: baked cinnamon rolls, candied cherries, caramel red apples, and fresh cherries, with just a subtle and well-integrated hint of oak underneath it all. This is a pretty amazing nose. The wheat character is evident immediately — no rye spice to cut through the fruit and bakery notes, just a clean, lush wave of sweetness and warm spice in perfect proportion.
On the palate, the richness that the nose promises is fully delivered. Candied cherries lead the way, joined by cinnamon King Cake, Caribbean vanilla, juicy fruit gum, Red Hots candy, and a full array of baking spice. There is a nice oak backbone that keeps everything from going too sweet, giving the palate good structure without ever becoming tannic or drying. The mouthfeel is medium-full and creamy, exactly what you want from a high-proof wheated bourbon.
The finish is long — genuinely long. The Red Hots, baking spice, and vanilla linger and linger, fading slowly and pleasantly. This is not a bourbon that disappears quickly. It asks you to sit with it. This finish does not have the well defined oak of the Van Winkle bourbons and William LaRue Weller, but given the price point I don’t care.
This is a truly solid and utterly complex wheated bourbon. It also has no serious negatives-the whiskey is clean with no yeast funk, it drinks nicely at high proof, and has no youthful bitterness.
Nashville Barrel Company continues to demonstrate that they know exactly what they are doing when they walk through MGP’s rackhouses, and this barrel pick is proof that their talents extend beyond the rye-recipe barrels. If you enjoy wheated bourbons — think a high-proof Maker’s Mark Private Select or a cask-strength Larceny-style profile, but with more complexity — Barrel #9527 is worth tracking down while it lasts. The Shopify store at Nashville Barrel Company is your best bet. Thank you to my friend Chad Luke for sending me the link to order this.