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Day 18 - KWM 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar - Still Austin Cask Strength Bourbon

Posted on December 18, 2024

Day 18 - Still Austin Cask Strength Bourbon – 58%

By Evan

Well, it took going through 2/3 of our KWM 2024 Not Advent Calendar tasting series, but I finally managed to sneak in a Bourbon!

To all of you Bourbon lovers out there: You’re welcome. I know — I am pretty amazing. And incredibly humble. I mean handsome.

To all of you Bourbon haters out there, and Andrew: I am sorry — but not that sorry.

When it comes to Bourbon, there is a still-common misconception that all Bourbon has to be made in the state of Kentucky. This is wrong. It just often seems like all Bourbon comes from Kentucky when all you see on liquor store shelves are the likes of Jim Beam, Wild Turkey, Buffalo Trace, and other Kentucky Straight Bourbons. For quite a while Kentucky has been the de facto Bourbon Whiskey Producer in the USA, producing about 95% of all Bourbon made. This is simply because Kentucky is where most of the distilleries that survived Prohibition are located. Outside of Kentucky, there is only one massive distillery in Indiana that has operated for most of that time as well.

More people are becoming aware of the truth – that Bourbon can be made anywhere in the USA. Much of this awareness coincides with the tremendous increase we have seen in Bourbon Whiskey released from distilleries in other states. A lot of what we have seen comes from smaller and younger craft distilleries, but there are some big players making Bourbon in the likes of Alabama, Indiana, Missouri, and other areas as well. States such as Colorado, California, Texas, Virginia, Washington and more have become hotbeds of craft Bourbon and Whiskey production over the past decade.

Still Austin Whiskey Co. and Distillery resides in Austin, Texas. It opened it doors in 2017, having been co-founded by six fellow Austinites three years earlier. It was the first distillery to open and operate within the city since Prohibition.

The distillery prides itself on being grain to glass – a concept we touched on a bit with Kilchoman’s 100% Islay KWM Cask we tasted on Day 5, Lochlea’s Cask Strength Batch 2 from Day 7, and the Daftmill 15 Year Old we tasted in the 2023 KWM Whisky Calendar. There are local distilleries that have focused on this as well, as we discovered in prior whisky calendars with Shelter Point Distillery and Eau Claire Distillery. For Still Austin, being grain to glass means sticking as local as possible for sourcing grain all the way through maturation and bottling.

Kind of like Kensington Wine Market, Still Austin wouldn't exist without Nancy. For us, Nancy refers to Nancy Carten, the founder and owner of KWM until 2015, when she sold the company to Andrew Ferguson.

Still Austin Distillery’s Nancy is not a person, though. It is their continuous still that is much taller than our Nancy (not that it is a competition, mind you), standing to 42 feet in height.

Still Austin Distillery walkthrough on YouTube

The capital city of Texas does what it can to keep things weird, or at least be a bit different from the typical Everything’s Bigger and Don’t Mess With slogans that the second-largest-by-land-size American state is known for. Austin is home to quite a few well-known annual cultural and social events, such as the South by Southwest Festival and the Austin City Limits Music Festival. The town has also been celebrating Eeyore’s birthday for the past 59 years. Eeyore is the super pessimist / misunderstood realist donkey from Winnie the Pooh, and my personal spirit animal.

Still Austin distillery’s whiskey has been available in Alberta for two or three years now, with The Musician Bourbon being available consistently during that time. The small batch Still Austin Cask Strength we will be tasting today is also typically available, along with Still Austin’s The Artist Rye. The Rye is a fantastic and not often seen 100% Rye worth checking out as well.

Before we dive into this Cask Strength Bourbon, here is a quick primer or refresher on what makes Bourbon — well - Bourbon:

  • As mentioned earlier: Bourbon can only be made in the USA – but it can be made ANYWHERE within the USA and its territories.
  • The primary grain used in making Bourbon Whiskey is corn. Corn has to make up at least 51% of the grain mash bill used to make Bourbon.
  • Bourbon Whiskey has to be aged/matured in new oak vessels. New as in fresh/never used before. Virgin oak is a common term used for this. These casks must also be charred, which gives Bourbon much of its style and character.
  • Unlike most other whisky-making countries, the USA does not define a minimum age for whiskey. If you see the term “Straight” on the label, that means the whiskey is at least 2 years old, and that if it is less than 4 years old that its exact age must be stated on either the front or back label.

Now that is all out of the way, let's give it a taste!

Still Austin Cask Strength Bourbon – 58%

“The Musician is a Bourbon made by Still Austin Whiskey Co from a mash of 100% Texas-grown grain. The exact mash bill for The Musician Bourbon is 70% White Corn, 25% Rye, and 5% Malted Barley. The whiskey was matured as is typical, using heavily charred virgin oak casks. This is the cask strength version of the regular Still Austin Texas Bourbon, aged for at least two years. It is bottled at 58% ABV.”

Evan’s Tasting Note

Nose: Blueberry pie, black forest cake, peach-infused sweet tea, caramelizing brown sugar on a cast iron pan, New leather jacket, Tobacco leaves drying in a shed, cinnamon, and a touch of bell pepper, fresh basil and oregano herbaceousness.

Palate: Bold and spicy with a touch of woody smoke up front. Notes of cherry, toffee apple, dark chocolate, pistachio nuts, dark roast coffee, cinnamon and nutmeg, cloves, and roasted sweet peppers.

Finish: Sweet and almost syrupy but with plenty of drying oak and spice to balance things out.

Comment: Something about this dram reminds of Merlot and Cabernet Franc – full of fruit and tobacco notes with a peppery backbone. Delicious stuff, and different enough from your run-of-the-mill Bourbons to keep things exciting.

There you go! The contractually obligated Bourbon in our Not An Advent Calendar tasting series is out of the way? Or, wait – could there be more than one….?

Cheers,
Evan

Playing catch-up on our 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar?

You can find the rest of the blog posts here!

This entry was posted in Whisky, Bourbon, Whisky Calendars, Distillery, Tastings - Online Tasting, KWM 2024 Not An Advent Calendar Tastings

 

 

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