Bourbon Season 2020 - Part 3 // Weller Special Reserve
We are merely inches away from December in this year’s calender, and I’d like to talk a bit more about bourbon before I start talking about ‘the most wonderful time of the year’. In part 3 of my Bourbon Season 2020 series, I’ll be reviewing Weller Special Reserve. Additionally, you’ll find out what a ‘wheated bourbon’ is all about. Enjoy!
Text by Mickaël Van Nieuwenhove
Photography is © Reinhold Podevijn
Weller - The Original Wheated Bourbon
In previous articles, I mentioned that the Buffalo Trace Distillery owns quite a lot of bourbon brands. This means that plenty of bourbons have a brand name that is not really linked to their original distillery anymore. One of those examples is Weller, first created by the Stitzel-Weller Distilling Company, founded in 1935 and closed in 1972. The brand was sold several times, and was picked up by the Sazerac Company in 1999, which owns the Buffalo Trace Distillery, where the W.L. Weller brand is currently produced. You got that? Okay, let’s move on.
The name “Weller” refers to a man named William Larue Weller, who supposedly introduced the production of straight bourbon using wheat instead of rye in the mash bill. That’s why the label of the bottle reads “The Original Wheated Bourbon”.
Wheated bourbon, as the name suggests, is partially made from wheat, though the mash bill still has to contain at least 51% corn for it to be called bourbon. This means that the usual suspect in bourbon distillation, rye, is less present in a wheated bourbon, which obviously contains more wheat than usual. To make things a bit more complicated, there’s also a spirit called a “wheat whiskey”, which is made by using a mashbill of primarily wheat. And to help those of you out, there’s another brand that produces wheated bourbon, and its expressions are rather famous and tough to hunt down. Something something Van Winkle. You might have heard of it.
At this moment, you might be asking why distilling companies decide to add wheat to their grain bill rather than sticking to rye. Well, it supposedly brings out the corn aspect in the distillate, as wheat itself is less flavorful than for example rye. It’s a simple case of adding a ‘filler’ in the mash bill to allow other grains to shine through. This, in theory, should result in a sweeter and softer bourbon. Now let’s put that to the test.
Weller is owned by the Buffalo Trace Distillery, which is symbolically shown in this photograph, with falling leaves representing the cyclical decay of nature. Yes. That’s deep.
Tasting notes
At 45% ABV, this expression is a bit sharper in the nose. There’s vanilla, some watered-down honey, and grassy notes. There’s a slight orange peel note, or at least that’s what I’m calling it. It was a bit difficult to pin-point. Not very expressive, but often the nose doesn’t say much if not combined with the tongue. After tasting it, I also got a warmer note, reminding me of cinnamon.
Sipping this whisky brought more honey, vanilla, a little bit of wood, and a teeny tiny sour note. There’s a bit of a drier finish at the end, and there’s just a hint of ‘burn’ somewhere along the way. I have to say, this expression is very ‘liquid-y’, similar to water. I generally prefer whiskies that are a bit more oily in texture, I like to ‘chew’ on my drams once in a while. To me, this expression is right at the opposite end of the spectrum.
As an after-thought, I’d like to add that this might be one of those expressions that give bourbon a bad name among Scotch drinkers. It’s light, it’s liquid-y, and it’s not complex or layered or anything like that. I’d have to agree with them, were it not that I always try to find a way of describing expressions in such a way that people who have a certain palate might benefit from my reviews.
I’d suggest Weller Special Reserve to people who’d like to have a ‘summer bourbon’, light and easy, offering up easy flavors that are enjoyed by a lot of people. It’s nothing special, but it’s one of those expressions you can put on the table when you have guests that vary in flavor preference. I’m pretty certain this is the type of expression that most people can at least enjoy, and I’m thinking that there’s a lot of summer cocktail recipes out there that would agree well with this Weller.
