Wilderness Trail Distillery

About Wilderness Trail Distillery

Wilderness Trail Distillery’s craft spirits are handcrafted with precision focusing solely on a unique sweet mash process and producing consistent great tasting award winning spirits.

We have a pioneering spirit here at Wilderness Trail Distillery, just like the settlers who followed the path Daniel Boone blazed into Central Kentucky. In keeping with our location in the birthplace of Kentucky, we like blending old traditions with the science of making Bourbon and other fine spirits.

After years of working with distilleries around the world to provide advice and fermentation products, we launched our premium craft distillery in 2012 with a focus on making the highest quality Bourbon, Rye Whiskey, Vodka and Bourbon Barrel-Aged Rum. Our founders Shane Baker and Pat Heist are fermentation experts with more than 20 years of experience in the production of alcohol and some of the best brands on the market today. Our specialty is making unique spirits from locally-grown grains to ensure quality, and adding a healthy dose of science in the process. Come see what we mean by visiting Wilderness Trail Distillery.

“We are not interested in making the most, just the best.” 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.

Wilderness Trail Distillery Spirits

Wilderness Trail Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Bottled-in-Bond Single Barrel Our high in small grain Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskeys are offered as a Single Barrel – Bottled in Bond. Two special releases in one bottle! The Single Barrel selection offers nuances only premium cooper select barrels can create from their toasting and 18-month air-dried staves. In addition, the Bottled in Bond gives you assurance the Bourbon was properly distilled, aged over 4 years and bottled by us under the supervision of the U.S. Government at 100 proof. Our Bottled in Bond release mash bill is 64 percent corn, 24 percent wheat and 12 percent malted barley using our yeast strains. This is one of the highest ratios of wheat used in a Bourbon made in Kentucky. We entered the cooper select, toasted and #4 char barrel at 110 proof after coming off the still around 137 proof. We then age our Bourbon in our two -story Rickhouse A, moving floors each year of maturation. Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Small Batch Bottled in Bond Our Rye small grain Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskeys are offered as a Small Batch, up to 12 barrels per batch, which was the result of one fermenter. The goal of the Small Batch is to capture the total essence of more complex notes from multiple barrels from distillate of the same fermenter. It is bottled at 92 proof. Our Small Batch release mash bill is 64 percent corn, 24 percent rye and 12 percent malted barley using our yeast strains. We entered the cooper select, toasted and #4 char barrel at 110 proof after coming off the still around 137 proof. Aged in both our Rickhouse A at a mid- to upper-floor and in our Rickhouse B in the center of the warehouse. Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey – Cask Strength Release Our Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskeys are offered as a Cask Strength release; we have the lowest entry proof we know of in Kentucky. We barrel at 100 proof to highlight the balance of the grains and alternate solubility expression from the barrel. A traditional three-grain recipe is 56 percent rye, 33 percent corn and 11 percent malted barley. Our rye mash bill is one we created for a broader balance of flavor to offset the typical high ryes commonly found. We use Kentucky-grown Heritage rye from our local KY Proud farm. We enter the new, air-dried #4 char, 53-gallon barrels at 100 proof for our Rye Whiskey and age until maturity in our barrelho