Every February we take a trip to some destination in New England. This year we chose Burlington, Vermont, located on famous Lake Champlain. Amidst the sites and opportunities that this beautiful city provides we made time to visit the tasting room of Mad River Distillers.
My lovely companion had a tasting flight of cocktails made with their spirits, while I sampled a tasting flight of four of their flagship spirits. Let’s take a look!
Mad River Bourbon whiskey. Unlike most other bourbons, made with corn, rye and barley, this is a wheater bourbon – there’s no rye in the mashbill. Instead the recipe includes corn, wheat, oats and barley. That particular mashbill I’ve never encountered before, so I give kudos to the distillers for developing something new.
Like the products of most new distillers, this whiskey is still young. I’m getting the flavor of the newmake beginning to age in the barrel’s wood, but like most young bourbons it hasn’t yet had time to extract the best flavors from deeper layers of the wood. As such, the corn and oak notes still predominate. It’s obviously not up there with the maturely aged product of a distillery that has been around for a century, but I welcome this encouraging start.
Mad River Revolution Rye Whiskey – This is quite welcome. We’re beginning to taste an interesting flavor profile emerge, although the oak flavor is significant. There are notes of rye, spice, and best of all – burnt chocolate! Worth taking home a bottle! I look with anticipation to see how this product evolves over the next few years.
The distillers note that this rye whiskey uses “three distinct rye varietals, including chocolate malted rye, which lends the spirit a cocoa richness and finish. We use an “all rye” mash bill, with a portion of “toasted rye” which releases aromatic chocolate and mocha notes into the distillate.”
Mad River Burnt Rock Bourbon is the find of the month! As you know, bourbon may not have any flavors added to it, but a few places are experimenting with using smoked grains to produce bourbon. Peated Scotch whiskey has a distinct flavor which comes from burning peat to smoke the barley. That’s usually not considered an added flavor, but rather a part of the grain drying process. If that’s valid then the same could be true for American whiskey.
Here they use not only corn and rye in the mash bill but also maplewood smoked barley. The result is a bourbon with just a hint of sweetness and smokiness. This is a great start, and I can’t wait to taste what a four or six year old version of this would be like. This whiskey was named after a popular hiking trail up Burnt Rock Mountain in Mad River Valley, Vermont.
For more info see Mad River unveils Burnt Rock Bourbon and Mad River’s Newest Release; Burnt Rock Bourbon
Mad River First Run Rum is made with cane sugar and then, like whiskey, aged in new charred American oak barrels. They note that “All of our sugars are fair trade certified, all natural raw cane sugars sourced from Texas or Malawi, depending on the season.”
This has a crisp, pleasant taste with a light mouthfeel. This is a modern American style rum, not like the funky rums of the Carribean.
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