The Maven Releases Its Inaugural Bourbon
New brand The Maven has made its first release, its flagship entitled The Maven Straight Kentucky Bourbon. Through self-distillation, custom-specified sourcing, and selective barrel acquisition, Master Distiller Kevin Curtis, Master Blender Steve Hughes, Associate Master Blender Ashley Moore and their team assembled the most diverse privately owned bourbon library in America, an inventory now serving as the springboard for The Maven Distillery’s ambitious innovation and blending.
“With The Maven, we set out to move beyond the singular mindset that has defined the bourbon category for most of my career,” shares The Maven Master Blender Steve Hughes. “We built a library spanning different mashbills, whiskey styles, barrel types and oak profiles, giving us an entirely new palette to work from. That breadth lets us layer flavor to achieve a level of complexity that we previously had not explored. Blending became less an act of combination than an act of discovery.”
The Maven’s maturation method relies heavily on toasting, a process which develops deeper caramelized natural wood sugars than traditional charring alone. To achieve its desired profile, the team masterfully blends whiskeys aged their full term in toasted American oak, with whiskeys first matured in traditional charred oak barrels and finished in various toasted rare oak casks. Master Blender Steve Hughes developed The Maven’s proprietary toasting profile in close partnership with the brand’s barrel supplier to draw out the oak’s most desirable flavor compounds. The slower toast treatment is coupled with the use of five distinct oak types that inform the final blend, including traditional American oak, Kentucky’s own Chinkapin oak, Pacific Northwest Garryana, French oak, and Mizunara imported from Hokkaido, Japan, each contributing its own layer of complexity. The Maven is bottled at 94 proof.
The highly allocated Maven Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey has an SRP of $199 and is available at select retailers in Kentucky beginning this month, with availability to follow in New York, California and nationwide via online retailers.
