Kings County's core Bourbon is frequently cited in lists of the best non-Kentucky Bourbons. The mash bill includes 80% New York organic corn (from the Finger Lakes) and English Golden Promise barley for a high-malt recipe that avoids the wheat or rye typically used in Kentucky Bourbon. This is a Bourbon made like a Scotch Whisky—Kings County double pot-distil for purer and more flavourful white spirit, which is then aged in a variety of new, charred oak barrels for between three and six years.
The nose offers spicy, cedar, fresh oak and roasted malt notes. Very fine but also complex, there is also the suggestion of pecan, fresh corn and cherry. The palate is spicy and fine; there's real depth of malt and fruitcake flavours shot through with higher notes of citrus, vanilla bean, cinnamon and other autumnal spices. The texture is very smooth, a spirit of the quality we normally associate with top-notch Cognac. The finish is lingering and perfumed.