Review #131: 2024 Grain to Glass Wheated Bourbon Whiskey

Review #131: Heaven Hill Grain to Glass Wheated Bourbon Whiskey

COST: $100 for 700mL bottle

AGE: 6 yrs

MASH BILL: 52% Beck’s 6158 corn, 35% wheat, 13% malted barley

PROOF: 121

2024 is the inaugural release of the Grain to Glass expression from Heaven Hill. The Grain to Glass project is intended to provide a high level of transparency on what exactly is going into the whiskey and the process along the way. HH particularly wanted to put a focus on the farmer, because without the farmer making great grains, Heaven Hill can’t make great whiskey. This will be an annual release, and each year will feature a new corn varietal that they will create 3 different mash bills and bottlings from. (MIND BLOWN!) So, if you were hoping for some new mash bills from Heaven Hill, snug up your bootstraps and get ready for something new every year for the foreseeable future!

For 2024, the corn varietal that is featured in all three G2G expressions is Beck’s 6158. This particular review is for the wheated bourbon expression. (Look at reviews #132 and 133 from me for the other two expressions.) For comparison, Larceny is 20% wheat and this has a big 35% wheat component! Let’s see how this new mash bill and corn perform in this wheater!

Reviewed neat in a Glencairn.

APPEARANCE: Mahogany (1.6), with fat, slow legs.

NOSE: Brown sugar simple syrup and sweet cherry lead off setting a rich, sweet tone. Toasted vanilla, nutty marzipan, orange peel, and candied cherry ebb and flow. While the nose is generally sweet, there’s a sort of earthy/woody/grainy note along with baking spice that lingers in the background giving this depth.

PALATE: Velvety mouthfeel, caramel and baking spice dominate with a slight maraschino cherry note. I get a sort of toasted cracker note before transitioning towards an earthier, peppery note. Toasted, tannic oak is found a bit deeper, while simultaneously there’s a brightness that lightens the palate. While the sweeter notes are concentrated on the front end of the taste, the baking spice and oak persists rolling into the finish.

FINISH: Slightly tannic and medium to long in length. Cherry wood, barrel char, seasoned oak, earthy baking spice, and a touch of vanilla. While the nose and palate lean towards the sweeter side, the finish is more woody/earthy and a bit spiced – the background notes of the nose and palate are really front and center here.

RATING: 7.3/10

VALUE: 4.0/10 (This considers price, overall rating, age, and proof, and is calculated in relevancy to all other reviews I’ve made where a 5.0/10 is average. See my website or spreadsheet for more details.)

OVERALL: This is a very different experience than Heaven Hill’s other wheated bourbon expressions such as Larceny or Old Fitzgerald. I actually think I like it better though. It’s not nearly as sweet as Larceny, but it’s more complex. It still has sweetness, but there’s a earthy/grainy profile and more spice that help balance it out and provide a bit more dimension and complexity. I’m thinking this is largely attributed to the 35% wheat in this vs. HH’s normal 20% wheat.

Behind the Bottle

In the 2000s the “farm to table” concept was exploding onto the restaurant scene. By the early 2010s, the success of farm to table restaurants made it clear that people wanted to know more about where their food comes from and wanted the transparency of what they were consuming. Max Shapira, Executive Chairman of Heaven Hill, recognized this thirst for knowledge and transparency and wanted Heaven Hill to do something that provided this transparency through whiskey. This is how the Grain to Glass project came to be.

In the mid-2010s, the Heaven Hill innovation team came up with the concept of making a bourbon where they would be involved with the development of that whiskey from the grain selection all the way to the pour in your glass. While it’s not uncommon for a distillery to work directly with the growers, Heaven Hill took it one step further and worked directly with the supplier of the seeds that would be planted.

Grain Development

Beck’s Hybrids is a leader in the agriculture industry for hybridization. They work with farmers to develop hybrid crops for desired specs: perform well in certain soils and environmental conditions, disease resistance, flavors, starch content, yield, etc. They do all this through old school manual pollination (these are not GMO plants). Heaven Hill started working with Beck’s to pick hybrid grains that would perform very well in central Kentucky, where they would have their neighbor, Peterson Farms, grow the crops that would ultimately go into the Grain to Glass whiskeys.

Beck’s creates their hybrid varieties by cross pollinating two inbreed plants to come up with new hybrids. For corn, specifically, they will take thousands of corn plants and collect the pollen from the tassels from one variety and then, by hand, apply that pollen to the silks of another variety. The corn kernels that are produced from this cross pollination are hybrids. Those hybrid kernels are then planted, producing a more resilient plant that has a mix of traits from the two parent varieties. One thing I found very interesting is Beck’s uses computer modeling to help determine which crosses have higher probability to produce hybrids with specific desirable traits. But ultimately, they have to trial it out in real life to confirm which takes time.

It takes Beck’s about 7-10 years to develop a specific hybridized plant and generate enough seeds to be able to offer it to farmers. So, with Heaven Hill starting distilling G2G in 2017, the crop would have been grown in 2016, which means it would have been around 2009 or so that Beck’s 6158 first started being hybridized. This also means that Beck’s 6158 wasn’t specifically made for Heaven Hill’s G2G project. It was a variety that Beck’s already hybridized for the central Kentucky environment. Based on this timeline though, and knowing how long Beck’s has been working with Heaven Hill on this project, if you think about it, 2024 might be the first year that Beck’s actually produced a corn hybrid specifically for Heaven Hill. So, maybe 2030-2032 we might see a G2G expression that is uniquely Heaven Hill in that the grain itself wasn’t just selected to grow well in Kentucky, but was designed specifically for Heaven Hill whiskey production… That’s pretty cool to think about!

Heaven Hill and Peterson Farms meets with Beck’s Hybrid each year in late winter to discuss what new hybrid corn varietals they have developed each year that would be good for them to grow in central Kentucky and make good whiskey. There are usually 2 or 3 new varieties that they evaluate, and after one is selected, seeds are sent to Peterson Farms to grow that year.

Growing the Grain

Peterson Farms, located in Loretto, KY, has specialized in producing grain for the distilling industry for decades. They recognize that their grain is ultimately being consumed directly by the end consumer i.e. not just feeding livestock. This means they need to produce high quality grain because it will be directly detectable by the end consumer. Therefore, Peterson Farms has a high focus on quality control with their crops and wants to ensure they are producing the best products for their customers. Additionally, to ensure they can consistently provide the same quality product to their customers, who rely heavily on consistency, they focus on sustainable farming and ensure their #1 asset is around for a long time: their land. This means using crops such as Beck’s 6158 that are bred to thrive in their specific climate and soil is key for them to reduce their water consumption, reduce the need for fertilizers and pesticides, and produce high and consistent yields.

By having Peterson Farms directly involved in the grain selection process and knowing what the end goal is, they are able to plan accordingly for the exact fields to plant the G2G crops, ensure best practices are used for the specific crop to produce high germination rates and survival rates, and ensure that land remains viable for future crops.

Peterson Farms will plant about 60 acres of corn for the G2G program, producing about 670k pounds of corn each year. They will plant the corn around the middle of April and harvest it in October. They allow the corn for the G2G program to dry in the field to around 19% moisture content, and then it is air dried to get it down to 15% or less (Heaven Hill’s spec). This is normally complete by December, allowing the distillation to begin in the middle of winter.

In an interview with Bernard Peterson, CFO of Peterson Farms, and HH Master Distiller, Conor O’Driscoll, on a recent Tales from the Hill podcast, they dropped a nugget that I found very interesting. They mentioned they are working on a Kentucky grown rye variety to use as a cover crop for fields, and future editions of G2G will feature a Kentucky grown rye from the Peterson Farm. Rye traditionally doesn’t grow well in Kentucky, so supply is very limited from within the state, and in a lot of cases, KY distilleries have to procure rye from further away where it’s easier to grow. I wasn’t able to glean whether or not the rye varietal was being developed by Beck’s or not, but either way, it sounds like future G2G expressions may feature unique grain varieties other than corn. But further, as a byproduct of the G2G program, a new cover crop is being introduced that can be used as an actual money generating crop for the farmer, which means the farmer can generate revenue from that field in the offseason, while putting nutrients back into the soil and preventing soil erosion. That’s a big win for everyone! I love seeing the distillery working with the farmer so closely to ensure everyone wins.

Making the Whiskey

All Grain to Glass barrels are aged at the Cox’s Creek facility. Heaven Hill bought the Cox’s Creek facility because they believed it would provide excellent aging warehouses as it is located at the highest point in Nelson County and provides excellent air flow for the rickhouses. The batches of distillate for these 2024 G2G expressions were distilled in 2017, and the Cox’s Creek facility was only recently finished just before then. So recently, in fact, that there was no whiskey that had come from Cox’s Creek before the decision was made to age these G2G barrels there. However, based on sampling some 2-3 year old whiskey that was already stored there, they were very impressed with the quality of the whiskey at such a young age that they felt this would be a risk worth taking. It’s believed that the environment for the rickhouses at Cox’s Creek (airflow, sunlight, etc.) somewhat accelerates the aging and character development of whiskey. Susan Wahl, Vice President of American Whiskey, describes it as whiskeys in that 5-6 year range at Cox’s Creek tastes more like 7-8 year whiskey at other locations.

Each batch of G2G was only about 600-700 barrels, as compared to about 1200-1500 barrels for other batches HH makes. So, these are relatively small batches for Heaven Hill. The barrels for the 2024 expressions were specifically aged on floors 3, 4, and 5 in warehouse W3 at Cox’s Creek (That makes these expressions single rickhouse expressions.) All the warehouses at Cox’s Creek are 7 floor rickhouses. Based on Heaven Hill’s long history of aging whiskey, they knew that these mid floors do really well at producing 6-8 year old whiskey.

For the 2024 G2G expressions, Heaven Hill considered either releasing all 3 expressions at barrel proof or all 3 at the same proof so that they could be compared side by side more easily. However, after tasting them all at various proofs, they decided that they really all performed best at different proofs; therefore, they ultimately decided to release them each at the proof they thought showcased each expression best. (Personally, I wish they would have released each at barrel proof and did a recommended proofing, similar to what Found North does. This would allow the consumer the flexibility to try them all at cask strength or proof them all down to the distillery’s recommendation.)

I know that was a lot longer “Behind the Bottle” than I normally do, but the amount of information that Heaven Hill has made available on the Grain to Glass project and 2024 expressions is refreshing! This level of transparency is pretty unheard of in the American whiskey industry, and particularly with the legacy distilleries. If you found any of this interesting, I recommend you go check out the 3 part series about the Grain to Glass program on the Tales from the Hill podcast produced by Heaven Hill.

1 | Disgusting | ...I've not subjected myself to this level

2 | Poor | Balcones Lineage

3 | Bad | High West Double Rye, Jefferson's Ocean 28

4 | Sub-par | Weller's SR, Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select

5 | Good | Buffalo Trace, Sazerac Rye, Green River Wheated

6 | Very Good | Blanton's, Holladay Bourbons, Eagle Rare

7 | Great | Baker's 7yr SiB, WhistlePig PiggyBack SiB, 1792 BiB

8 | Excellent | Most ECBP batches, JD SiB BiB, High West MWND Act 11

9 | Incredible | Barrel Bourbon Batch T8ke, BBC DS #7, Four Roses OESQ

10 | Perfect | Found North Batch 08