Castle & Key

For the past few months I've been following the developments of Castle & Key, a new distillery being started at the previously abandoned grounds of the Old Taylor distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. From what I'm learning, it seems like they're making a lot of good decisions. That coupled with the fun of following their development is making me very much look forward to trying their first output at some point in 2020 or 2021.

They barreled their first distillate back in November and their first releases will all be Bottled in Bond. They're starting with two bourbons, a rye and a wheated, which are going into the barrels at a low 107 proof. They're using two different yeast strains as well, so a total of four different bourbon recipes.

Their bourbons are using mashbills of 73% white corn, 17% barley, 10% rye or wheat. They're also making a rye with a mashbill of 63% rye, 20% corn, 17% barley. All recipes are using a pretty high percentage of barley, so that'll be interesting.

I'm very much enjoying following their Twitter feed and reading the various interviews and articles that are starting to pop up all over the place.

What prompted this post was listening to a lengthy interview with Marianne Barnes, their master distiller, in the Whisky Topic podcast. It's nearly 45 minutes, but well worth the time I feel: whsky.buzz/thewhiskytopic/…