By 2018, Holmes had logged 28 years at Beam and was looking for a new challenge in distilling. At age 59, she enjoyed her work, but she’d begun sniffing around opportunities in craft distilling. Ironically, it would be another Beam employee who’d steer her to Milam & Greene.
Milam & Greene is renowned for creating premium bourbons, and their Bottled in Bond Straight Bourbon is no exception.
In the past decade, American distillers have turned to unique cooperage to differentiate their whiskeys. In some cases, it’s worked wonderfully, especially when real experts in the management of maturate and blending are pulling the levers.
Really, I guess, whiskey chose me. I found it interesting, and when you follow your curiosity, it takes you places.
Distillery Edition Batch 5, Five-Year-Old Straight Bourbon Whiskey was pot-distilled in a 300-gallon copper still. It is made with a mash bill of 70 percent corn, 22 percent malted rye, and eight percent malted barley along with their proprietary yeast recipe.
On the nose of this BIB release is spring in a glass–a mixed bouquet of peonies, roses and lilac–backed by cinnamon stick and lavender. I’d be hard pressed to recall nosing such a floral spirit.
I’ve never been a fan of the children’s vitamin note common to whiskeys made there, and I assumed this would bring more of the same. It didn’t. This is a delicious whiskey with unique virtues appreciated in its aromas and flavors.
It has a long viscous finish with hints of menthol, gingerbread, and candy corn. This is one of the highest-proof bourbons bottled by Milam & Greene Whiskey and the distilling team recommends adding a measure of water to open the flavors.
Milam & Greene Unabridged Volume 2 flavors showcase the incomparable talents of the distillery team under the direction of CEO, Heather Greene, who was recently honored as the “Master Blender of the Year.”
Greene has long been a trailblazer in the whiskey industry. She was the first American woman to serve on the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society Tasting Panel and the first woman to write a whiskey book shortlisted in the New York Times.
