Clyde May's Barrel
Born in the Backwoods. Selected by Whiskey Library.
A single barrel of 8-year, cask-strength Alabama-finished bourbon — hand-picked in Troy, Alabama for character, depth, and a story worth telling.
— Follow us into Conecuh Ridge Distillery —
We Went to Alabama
Some picks you do over an email. This wasn’t one of them. The Whiskey Library team flew down to Troy, Alabama and drove out to the home of Clyde May’s — the Conecuh Ridge Distillery — to do this the way it should be done. By hand, by glass, by gut.
We didn’t do it alone. Our friend TJ Gamble — better known as Brewzle on YouTube — flew down to taste through the rickhouse with us. TJ has one of the sharpest palates in bourbon, and having him in the room pulling samples alongside us made the picks better. The barrel in your bottle got the nod from all of us.
We walked the rickhouses. We pulled samples straight from the thief. We tasted through barrel after barrel — staves still warm from the Alabama sun — looking for ones that earned their place on a Whiskey Library label. The barrel inside your bottle was found there, on that trip, by that team.
You don’t pick a barrel from a spec sheet. You pick it from the glass.
The Clyde Way
Clyde May was an Alabama distiller who refused to cut corners. He came home from the war in 1946 and started making whiskey in the woods of Bullock County the way his daddy taught him — slow, careful, and honest. He’d age it in charred oak and finish it with a hint of dried apples, the secret that turned a backwoods recipe into the official State Spirit of Alabama.
That tradition lives on at Conecuh Ridge Distillery in Troy. Eighty years on, the rules haven’t changed: real grain, real barrels, real time. No shortcuts. It’s the bourbon Alabama claims as its own — and it’s the only place we’d source a pick like this.
Built the right way. The Clyde way.
From charred oak barrels and 8 years of patient aging comes a bourbon built without shortcuts. This release was selected by Whiskey Library during our visit to Troy — Alabama-finished, bottled at barrel strength, uncut just like it comes from the barrel. Limited in quantity. Not for the timid.
Single Barrel. Bottled by Hand.
Each bottle in this release comes from one single barrel we hand-picked in Troy — pulled from the rickhouse, signed off in person, and bottled exactly as it came from the wood. A small, limited release. When it’s gone, it’s gone.
Drink it slow. Tell somebody.
Two More Things
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