Balcones releases experimental single cask whiskeys

Texas corn whisky producer Balcones is gearing up for its fifth anniversary celebrations with the release of “at least four” limited edition bottlings, starting with a straight Bourbon.

Chip Tate, founder of Texas distillery Balcones, is releasing four experimental single casks this year

Balcones Fifth Anniversary Straight Bourbon is a 64.6% abv bottling of a single cask with a rich, vanilla character and intense, spicy rye notes described as “Stagg-like”.

Just 150 bottles have been yielded but Balcones founder Chip Tate expects less to be made available in global markets with an RRP “somewhere under US$100”.

Following the Bourbon will be Balcones Brimstone Resurrection, a whisky formed from the burned ashes of blue corn atole.

“The short story is we screwed up,” explained Tate. “We cooked the corn over a direct fire and in turn made a mistake and burned the corn very badly, nuclear badly with three inches thick in the bottom and brown spirit coming off the still bad. But I still wanted it to make it work.”

The liquid was put through Brimstone’s special smoking process and laid to rest for three years in a heavily charred barrel before bottling at 67.8% abv. Tate describes the result as “a whisky that would make Dante proud”.

The third release will be a single barrel bottling of a straight corn whiskey – the first of its kind from the distillery – described as having “luscious notes of rich corn and apricots”.

Lastly a fourth limited edition bottling of a straight single malt whiskey will be released later in the year.

Balcones Bourbon and Resurrection were debuted in London and New York in March before an international rollout this summer.