If you've been to pretty much any of our live quarterly tastings on Zoom (we always look forward to connecting with so many of our members at these), you've heard our community rave about the first single barrel we ever did for Blind Barrels! This now-legendary cask from Mammoth Distilling was a 15 year Borrowed Time Canadian Rye aged in a used Weller barrel, and we wish we had more of it. It really hammered home for our members that craft whiskey belongs on the top shelf and can actually be collectible, with many people holding onto that bottle for years until cracking it open for a special occasion. So we had to go full-circle and bring them back for this "Best of the Best" release!

The team over at Mammoth Distilling are our kind of people, a group of fun-loving whiskey geeks who are passionate about hospitality and finding innovative ways to create the best spirits possible (plus, they're Michiganders, like Seabass). As Phil Attee, their Blender and National Sales Manager, says, "We're actually just a bunch of nerds who have lucked out in this industry." Phil is a former analytical food chemist and has worked with Mammoth for over a decade, joining a team founded by Chad Munger that includes a microbiologist, an artist, and an agronomist! So you can rely on them to know their stuff, which is necessary when they do wild and extravagant things like resurrect an extinct variety of grain that needs to be grown on its own remote island (see Rosen Rye) and Jurassic Parking (is that a phrase?) another species of rye lost in a shipwreck on Lake Huron nearly 150 years ago (keep your eyes open for their Shipwreck Rye project). The world is their oyster, as Michigan's wealth of natural resources (it's the second-most agriculturally diverse state in the US after CA) allows them to grow and experiment with many different types of grain and wood. They have big goals that start with their name, as this is a "Mammoth-sized" endeavor to bring the abundance of the North to people through their many spirits (plus Chad and his wife Tracy have a woolly mammoth-esque Newfoundland dog they feature on their labels).

This Northern Bourbon is a perfect example of their success, the fruit of several projects to make whiskey that properly represents their region. As Phil says, "If you do whiskey right it has terroir." Local grains (Wapsie Valley Corn, Wheeler Rye, and Conlon Barley) in their Woolly Bourbon provide incredible richness and viscosity, and after a wide search to determine the sort of wood that would best complement their distillate, they settled on toasted cherry wood staves from right in their backyard (Michigan being the cherry capital of the world and all). There's this fruity and spicy component to the cherry wood that really amplifies what's already in the whiskey, and the aromatics from the wood make the flavors from the heirloom grain varietals really pop and adds some delightful perceived sweetness. Phil's description of it is music to our ears, as he says "Nobody is gonna taste this and say I've had whiskey that tasted like that before. It's recognizable that it's Bourbon, but it's not Bourbon like you've had before." This process is hard to make repeatable, so it's a testament to their craft that they're able to include this as a regular part of their lineup going forward, and this is the first time it is being released outside of their tasting room. But don't let that stop you from visiting one of their many tasting rooms across MI, trust us, they'll show you a good time!