Every September is Virginia Spirits Month and every year I try to explore some new spirits bottles produced – and preferably distilled – here in my home state. I haven’t had great luck finding a Virginia bourbon that I enjoy enough to replace a bottle of.
This year I decided to take shots on a few more including this bottle from KO Distilling in Manassas, not far from where I grew up, which produces some nice gins. The head distiller is chemical engineer Ryan Hendricks. This is a bottled in bond 4-year-old wheated bourbon made from an all-Virginia grown mash bill of 70% corn, 20% wheat, and 10% malted barley. My bottle is from batch #L25F16 A 237361.
The bottle has been open just over two weeks and these are my first impressions after two separate tastings – a final review will be posted once the bottle’s been open at least one to two months to account for aeration.
The bourbon has a medium-long viscosity in the glass and a creamy mouthfeel that coats the palate nicely. The aroma profile, for me, is too subtle – it’s grain and oak-forward, reminding me of sawdust, followed by notes of caramel, vanilla cream soda, dried orchard fruits, herbal/grassy notes, black pepper, light baking spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves), toasted brown sugar, light barrel char smokiness, biscuits/scones, leather, and dried tobacco leaf. The aromas need to be patiently teased out over time with aeration in the glass and they are, in the end, underwhelming – they’re pleasant but unexciting.
On the palate, the bourbon makes up for the unexciting nose with flavors of caramel and dark vanilla, robust baking spices mixed with black pepper, peppery charred oak, dried orchard fruits, dried cocoa and dark chocolate, toasted nuts, leather, dried tobacco leaf, smoked maple sugar, and some balanced oak tannins mixing with dark sweetness and spice on the finish. In a blind, I wouldn’t guess this was a wheated bourbon and not a four grain because of the robust spice notes. There is some proof heat but it’s balanced. The finish closes more dry than sweet though there is some smoked maple sugar and caramel mixing with oak tannins – the length is a good 9-11 seconds.
This bottle is on sale for 20% off, coming in at $55.99 pre-tax and is, in my view, well worth a try at that price for someone interested in trying and supporting Virginia-produced spirits. I love that it’s entirely produced here from the grains to the milling and mashing, fermentation, distillation, aging, and blending. At the regular price of $69.99 (which makes sense for a small craft distillery producing something as unique as this), it would be, for me, a harder sell only because of what other bourbons I could get for less which I enjoy more. But I’m glad I tried this and my views on it are still being formed – I’ll write a final review after it’s been open at least one to two months and I’ve done other tastings of it.
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