Wilderness Trail Bottled In Bond Wheated Bourbon Review

By Richard Thomas

Rating: B+

When Shane Baker and Pat Heist set out to get into the business of making whiskey (as the owners of Ferm Solutions consultantcy, they already had a foothold in the whiskey business generally), they had two wants. Both men are self-confessed whiskey nerds at a time when whiskey nerds in general were obsessed with wheated bourbon. They both frankly admit its their favorite kind of bourbon, so they wanted to make it. They were also committed to making their core expressions bottled in bond whiskeys quite early on. Taking those two factors in account, it’s fair to say that Wilderness Trail Bottled In Bond Wheated Bourbon is the whiskey they got into the business to make.

Wilderness Trail’s wheated bourbon follows their “standard” mash formula of 64% corn, 24% flavoring grain (in this instance, wheat) and 12% malted barley. As one might expect from expert consultants on fermentation, their yeast strain is proprietary. They are a sweet mash outfit. The distillery goes to 134 proof on the still and ages in extra seasoned, #4 alligator char barrels for four to five years.

The Bourbon
My pour has the look of dulled copper. My take on the nose is that it smells like a toasted graham cracker smeared with apricot jam, if you sprinkled the top of that cracker with brown sugar, cinnamon and bits of clove and served it on a musty oak plank. It’s predominately sweet and fruity, but that musty wood and the extra spice are in no way minor players in the scent.

The flavor runs in a similar vein, albeit replacing the brown sugar with honey in the sweetness, while adding some caramel drizzle. It’s a well-balanced sipper, tasty and more than just a little sophisticated, hitting well above its weight in age terms. The finish runs quite warm, stays honeyed while also turning woodier, but doesn’t run along like that for long. It fades off a moment or two too soon.

The Price
Officially, these are supposed to sell for $60. A sampling of online retailers places that point in the center of the range of $55 to $65.