The other day I was invited to be part of the Kentucky media Zoom tasting of the latest Maker’s Mark Wood Finishing Series. It was a very interesting tasting. The latest Wood Finishing Series is being called “2.0” by the people at the distillery. They decided to start another Wood Finishing Series this year because they wanted to get the employees in the distillery involved in the project. They asked the employees that work in the distillery to write down what they taste in Maker’s Mark – every shift of workers were involved. They then took this list and looked at the most common attributes described by the workers. The most common flavors were caramel, chocolate and maple. They then experimented with different wood staves that enhanced these flavors. They ended up using ten virgin French oak staves. They asked the employees to taste it before they decided upon the final recipe and the employees thought they did a good job at capturing these flavors in the whiskey. They decided to call this release “The Heart Release” for a couple of reasons. First, they felt it honored the employees who put their heart and soul into making Maker’s Mark. It also represents the final cut of the Bourbon in the distilling process – the center cut, also known as the heart of the run.

The Zoom tasting started with a tasting of Maker’s Mark Cask Strength. Since normal Maker’s Mark barrels are used as the base for all of the Wood Finishing Series, it is a good place to start. They dump barrels of their Bourbon and then re-fill the barrels after they place the staves in the barrel. Matt and I have not tasted these whiskeys together yet so I will save the tasting notes for a later blog, but I will say that I love the cask strength Maker’s Mark and get a lot of caramel and apple with some pepper spice and oak in the Bourbon. We then moved on to the Heart Release whiskey. I will say that it achieved their goal. I got a lot of caramel and chocolate on the taste and the maple syrup came out on the long and sweet finish of oak and maple syrup. I really like this whiskey.

Maker’s Mark is going to do a total of five releases in this series. They are planning to do one release per year in the series instead of two per year that was the first series. The bottles are scheduled to hit the market on June 24 and there should be plenty of bottles for sale in every state. I expect that it will not last long on the shelves. It is that good. It will also be available through their Whiskey Drop program, so if you are signed up for the Whiskey Drop, expect to get a chance to purchase a bottle in the next drop.

Photos Courtesy of Rosemary Miller