North Carolina craft spirits company Oaklore Distilling Co. has announced the nationwide release of its flagship Oaklore Four Grain Bourbon, a whiskey with a character that defines Oaklore’s signature production style.

Oaklore Four Grain Bourbon showcases the blending and maturation talents of co-founder Thomas Bogan, who selects the brand’s barrels, batches them, and then re-barrels the bourbon for further maturation. This process also helps imbue them with characteristics from the North Carolina environment.

Relative to other American whiskey producing regions, North Carolina’s Piedmont is an optimal climate, particularly when it comes to barrel aging. The humid sub-tropical environment forgoes the broad temperature swings seen in Kentucky and other regions, resulting in a more consistent, year-by-year aging process—one that naturally allows for a more uniform whiskey profile and a richer taste.

Bogan commented: “It’s tremendously rewarding to the team at Oaklore to see our flagship whiskey take the next steps in its evolution, as we become available nationwide. Being a craft spirits producer is not for the faint of heart, but we feel confident that our bourbon – which perfectly represents the great state of North Carolina – is emblematic of everyone’s desire to see smaller, regionally-produced American whiskeys make a real go of it.”

Crafted by Oaklore at its sister distilleries in Kentucky and North Carolina, the Four Grain Bourbon is distilled on 24-inch Vendome all-copper column stills using corn, wheat, barley and rye. The whiskey combines the five- to six-year-old barrels of wheated bourbon and rye bourbon mash bills. Each one is aged separately and hand-selected and batched together, producing a final mash bill of 72 per cent corn, 11 per cent wheat, 10 per cent rye, and 7 per cent malted barley.

Bogan, along with co-founder Matt Simpkins, oversees this process and then re-barrels them for eight to 12 months in palletized, non-temperature-controlled warehouses in the North Carolina Piedmont.

Tasting notes provided by Oaklore Distilling say Four Grain Bourbon has notes of pecan and honey butter cake on the nose, followed by smooth toffee and vanilla crème brûlée on the palate.

Oaklore Distilling’s Four Grain Bourbon (SRP $69.99) is bottled at 92 proof and ships to select states across the US. Visit Oaklore’s official website for more information.