Ben Holladay Rickhouse Proof Small Batch Reserve Bourbon Whiskey

Description:
Holladay Distillery in Weston, Missouri is the oldest distillery west of the Mississippi, founded in 1856 by Ben Holladay — a Kentucky-born entrepreneur better known as the "Stagecoach King" for building the Overland Express lines that later became Wells Fargo, and who briefly owned the Pony Express itself. He and his brother David chose the site for its limestone spring, first charted by Lewis and Clark in 1804, and used it to distill whiskey using the same dual-cooker method still used on-site today. After decades under other names (including McCormick Distilling Co.), the distillery returned to bourbon production and the Holladay name in 2016, releasing its flagship six-year bottled-in-bond bourbon grain-to-glass from that same 73/15/12 corn/rye/malted barley mash bill recorded in Ben Holladay's own ledgers.

Rickhouse Proof is Master Distiller Kyle Merklein's full-proof, uncut expression of that same bourbon — bottled exactly as he tastes it straight from the barrel in the rickhouse, rather than cut down to standard bottling proof. This release blends four different rickhouse floors (15% floor 2, 58% floor 3, 22% floor 4, 5% floor 5) from the same distillation season that produced one of the distillery's most beloved bottlings, giving it a bigger, more robust flavor than Holladay's standard releases.