Balcones Fifth Anniversary Texas Straight Malt Whisky–Sweet
Balcones Distillery, Waco, Texas; Singlemalt; NAS; 57.5% ABV; Barrel #2653; Bottle 136 of 181; Bottled December, 20 2013
by Sean Fousheé
This release is part of Balcones’ limited (and they do mean limited) release of five single barrel expressions to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Distillery’s operations. Among this bottling of Straight Single Malt, the Fifth Anniversary series includes two releases of Texas Straight Bourbon; a special, one-off version of their Brimstone, named Resurrection; and a second bottling of Straight Single Malt that was finished in the Resurrection cask (apply designated as Straight Single Malt—Smoke).
All of Balcones’ single malt batches are grain to glass, twice distilled in traditional copper pots which were hand crafted by Balcones’ Head Distiller, Chip Tate. Tate, whom interned at the Bruichladdich Distillery, distills his whiskies in the traditional Scottish-style, which includes the use of imported Golden Promise malted barley from a small farm in the UK. The traditional distilling methods are the foundation upon which Tate has crafted a unique wood program to utilize the Texas heat in the maturation process which he hopes will create a new category of brown spirits: Texas Whisky.
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