There are many ways of finishing bourbon after it has reached maturity. Some distilleries will take their bourbon and place it in a wine cask to impart some of the fruity sweet notes of the wine, like we did with our first installment, the Marquette Cask Bourbon. Finishing a bourbon has become a more common practice in the distilling world in recent years, and our Special Finish Amaro Cask Bourbon is just one example of how this technique can be used to enhance a bourbon.
To get started on the process, we will start with our high proof spirit and start soaking an array of botanicals in it (chicory bark, wormwood, and orris root to name a few). We will let these soak for a day before adding fresh orange peel to the mix. That will soak for couple of days before the botanicals are pulled out and the coffee from Madcap Coffee is added in. We will take this and place it in a used oak barrel. We allow this to age for 3-4 months to impart the flavors of the Amaro Pazzo to the barrel. We will remove this and then refill this barrel with another hand selected Straight Bourbon barrel. This refilled barrel is allowed to age another 8 months and 19 days before it was emptied, bottled, and passed to you as our Amaro Cask Bourbon.
The Amaro Cask Bourbon is a unique take on a barrel finish. At the end of the day though, we just really wanted to stick some coffee in a bourbon as an afternoon pick-me-up.
