Charles Goodnight

Charles Goodnight blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail in 1866 and built the JA Ranch across roughly a million acres of the Texas Panhandle. Bill Foley, who owns Foley Family Wines, is his great-great-nephew and commissioned this bourbon.

The mash bill runs 60% Texas-grown corn, 36% rye and 4% barley, aged six years in charred American oak and bottled at 115 proof, non-chill filtered. The label reads bottled by Goodnight Distillery, Mira Loma, California. Texas heat drives whiskey in and out of the wood fast, so six years there tastes older than six in Kentucky. Buy it for high rye at barrel strength out of that climate, a combination you rarely see.