Bernheim Original Small Batch Wheat Whiskey

Bernheim was the first new style of American whiskey in decades when Heaven Hill introduced it in 2005: a straight wheat whiskey, with wheat as the majority grain rather than corn. Named for Isaac Wolfe Bernheim, the German immigrant who founded the I.W. Harper brand in the 1870s and whose Louisville distillery Heaven Hill now operates, it's made from a mash of 51% winter wheat, 37% corn, and 12% malted barley, aged a minimum of seven years in new charred oak, and bottled at 90 proof, with the age statement added in 2014 as the whiskey matured. Where wheated bourbons like Maker's Mark use wheat as the flavoring grain behind corn, Bernheim flips the ratio, and the result is unlike either: softer and lighter than bourbon, with a distinctive bread-and-honey sweetness and less of corn's heavy caramel. Expect a nose of fresh-baked bread, honey, vanilla, and light toffee with a whisper of oak, opening into a gentle, rounded palate of butterscotch, toasted wheat, mild baking spice, and soft fruit — pear, a little apricot — finishing smooth and medium-length with a faint oak dryness. Honest note: it's a mellow, easy whiskey, and drinkers who want big rye spice or cask-strength intensity should look elsewhere. For a bourbon drinker curious what wheat tastes like on its own, a gentle nightcap, or a Whiskey Sour with unusual softness, it remains the category's benchmark — and a great value from the house of Elijah Craig.

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