WILDERNESS TRAIL DISTILLERY

Danville, Kentucky

Based in tradition. Improved with science.

“We are not interested in making the most, just the best.” Wilderness Trail Distillery’s products are handcrafted with precision focusing solely on a unique sweet mash process and producing consistent great tasting award winning spirits.

With strong backgrounds in several sciences and more than 20 years of industry experience, we started our Bourbon path with a lot of yeast strains we collected over the years and combined those proprietary yeast with a premium selection of seed grade corn, wheat and rye varietals grown just a few miles from the distillery on Caverndale Farms. We also source rye from Walnut Grove Farms in Adairville, Ky. Our malted barley, grown in the northern states, arrives at the distillery from a grain elevator in Louisville. Our water comes from Kentucky’s natural limestone springs. We primarily produce two varieties of Bourbon Whiskey and a Rye Whiskey, all of which are made with 100 percent KY Proud®-sourced ingredients.

A noticeable distinction in our process and the flavor of our whiskeys comes from our proprietary Infusion Mashing Process, a process where we use the exact amount of heat to gelatinize starches without degradation of the quality of the grains. We find this process yields a much softer and flavorful distillate when married with our unique yeast strains. Another important distinction is that our steam is chemical-free because we use a clean steam boiler, the first Kentucky Bourbon distillery to do so. With this process, we avoid using boiler chemicals or off flavors. Only pure steam goes into our cooker and into our beer column.

Another unique distinction our whiskeys have is that we make a Sweet Mash instead of the Sour Mash technique. We were the first of Kentucky’s distillers to embrace the sweet mash process as our sole mashing technique. By not acidifying the mash, we are able to bring more flavors forward from the grains with a softer finish, just as in preparing a fine meal.

All of our whiskeys are distilled, aged and bottled here at Wilderness Trail Distillery in a rich traditional Kentucky environment. You can trust what you are enjoying with our name on the bottle. Our whiskeys are double-distilled in keeping with Kentucky tradition and we have several stills. Our 250-gallon Vendome Pot Hybrid Still produced the very first Bourbons we made. We use that still now primarily to distill our limited small batch Harvest Rum and to finish our third distillation of our Blue Heron Vodka, which is made from our wheated Bourbon distillate. Since 2016 all of our whiskeys have been distilled through a Vendome 40 foot tall, 18-inch beer column still and then double distilled continuously through our 250 gallon copper doubler. We have expanded our production to include a new 40 foot tall, 36-inch continuous beer still and 500 gallon doubler to increase our production output. That allows us to have a smaller more flexible system and a large production system, between the two we can produce 216 barrels per day.

We proof our whiskeys down with limestone-filtered spring water to enter the Independent Stave Company 53-gallon toasted and #4 charred barrels at 110 proof for our Bourbons and 100 proof for our Rye Whiskeys. We understand that the 100 proof entry into the barrel is the lowest in Kentucky for Rye Whiskey. More importantly, we just know it tastes better. Another more notable distinction of Wilderness Trail is that we have multiple aging Rickhouses onsite and we have chosen to mature our Bourbons to a minimal of 4 plus years old before releasing any Bourbon. Our goal is to age our whiskeys an average age of 6-8 years for our standard releases.

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