Buffalo Trace launches Bourbon with six grains

Sazerac-owned Buffalo Trace Distillery has expanded its Experimental Collection with the release of a new Bourbon made with a mash bill comprising six different grains.

Each grain in Organic Six Grain Whiskey is certified organic

Organic Six Grain Whiskey is certified organic and contains corn, buckwheat, brown rice, sorghum, wheat, and rice.

In 2010, the grains were milled, cooked and made into a sour mash before being distilled in Buffalo Trace’s experimental micro-still to 130 proof (65% abv).

The resulting spirit was then filled into eight new charred white oak barrels that had received the distillery’s standard number four level of charring. After resting in Warehouse H for seven years and one month, the whiskey was chill-filtered and bottled at 90 proof.

Buffalo Trace said that while it is unusual for a Bourbon to contain more than three different types of grain, Organic Six Whiskey “meets all of the requirements to be called Bourbon” since it is made with at least 51% corn.

However, since the expression has a different flavour to typical Bourbons created at the distillery, Buffalo Trace has opted to refer to it as a ‘whiskey’ in its title.

Organic Six Grain Whiskey has been created under Buffalo Trace’s experimental series, which currently has 14,000 barrels ageing in the distillery’s warehouses. The barrels experiment with a number of variables that impact the flavour of whiskey, including mash bills, wood types, and barrel toasts.

Many of the expressions are distilled at a dedicated micro-distillery based inside Buffalo Trace – the The Colonel E.H. Taylor, Jr. ‘OFC’ Micro Distillery.

In 2013, Buffalo Trace opened Warehouse X, an experimental warehouse designed to test the impact of environmental factors on whiskey maturation.

Earlier this year, the distillery unveiled details of a new experiment that saw it age Bourbon in oak barrels made from 300-year-old trees – the oldest oak trees the distillery could find that had already been harvested.