Wilderness Trail Rye Bourbon - BIB or not?

[PowderKeg]

 Saw this the other evening while bourbon surfin' - thought WTr went BIB for their bourbons.  The other couple same batch bottles on the shelf were BIB noted, only the one made no mention at all.  Just an odd or early label screwup, or a bad omen for the future?

 

 

[kevinbrink]

44 minutes ago, PowderKeg said:

 Saw this the other evening while bourbon surfin' - thought WTr went BIB for their bourbons.  The other couple same batch bottles on the shelf were BIB noted, only the one made no mention at all.  Just an odd or early label screwup, or a bad omen for the future?

 

 

I don't think having a NAS 100 proof bourbon that is not BIB is the sign of declining quality more likely in the case of the small guys it means some older barrels are getting mixed in so they are not sticking to a single distilling season to increase quality. 

[silverc]

1 hour ago, kevinbrink said:

I don't think having a NAS 100 proof bourbon that is not BIB is the sign of declining quality more likely in the case of the small guys it means some older barrels are getting mixed in so they are not sticking to a single distilling season to increase quality. 

 

It looks like they have the same batch number, D02. How could you have a batch where part is BIB and another part is not?

[PaulO]

They could have filled barrels, then stored some in a bonded warehouse, and others somewhere else?

Also, noticed the non bonded is labeled "non chill filtered".

My guess, as a small distillery starting out, they want to offer different versions - to see what people like.

[PowderKeg]

8 hours ago, silverc said:

 

It looks like they have the same batch number, D02. How could you have a batch where part is BIB and another part is not?

That's what caught my eye.  AIR, the only diff on the labels is the filtered vs bib line.  Neither label mentions the alternate in fine print elsewhere.  With BIB regaining some stature/value for the larger crafts (WTr, NR, Will) to separate them from the "aged at least X months" crowd, why would WTr want to confuse things like that.  I'm kinda wondering if the bottling line got hold of an early version (the filtered one) and used it by mistake.

[EarthQuake]

Just for practical purposes, if the Bourbon does not state an age, it must be at least 4 years old to be Straight. There is no specific quality signifier with BIB in this case. The major differences between a 100 proof Straight bourbon and a 100 proof Straight Bourbon BIB is that the liquid in the BIB batch must come from a single distilling season, and it must be stored in a government regulated facility. Whiskey from a single season is not necessarily better than a blend of seasons, and the regulations with Straight whiskey prevent the distillery from using any additives or anything shady, so the government regulation bit is really just for show.

 

So, if they have stocks form 4-6 years old, they could potentially make a better batch if it was not BIB, assuming they do not have enough of the 6 year to do a BIB batch of that, and even if they could do a 6 year BIB, there's no guarantee that it would be better than a 4-6 year blend.

 

The same batch number on each is curious though, I wonder if they're transitioning labels or got this mixed up?

Edited July 23, 2019 by EarthQuake

[WildernessTrace]

That one slipped out on us..  it is actually a Bottled in Bond, that is why it shares the same batch number D02 (2nd batch bottled in April).   If you dig through some old social media, you will find that we considered releasing a 92-94 proof small batch (that was the base label), thus the reason for the non-BIB label, however at the last minute (literally), we decided to stick with the higher proof of a BIB for both our Bourbons, the single barrel wheat and small batch rye.   We already had labels printed for the lower proof and THOUGHT we had removed them from inventory but somehow a box remained and was grabbed and a certain amount of bottles got into cases before we caught it.   The confusion from our bottling line was simply it was a black label and looked the same!   We again thought we captured all of them but a few rare unicorns that made it out.   We decided to let it go as it isn't really mislabeled as it stands, it just doesn't have the BIB designation on it.  

 

Also all of our whiskeys are non-chill filtered, that is normally stated on the back of the bottle but for the lower proof small batch we put that up front.  Right now we have no intentions of offering any Wilderness Trail Bourbon lower than 100 proof, bottled in bond.  We might be introducing our Rye Whiskey as a Bottled in Bond as right now we have kept it as Cask Strength. 

 

Another temporary variation you will notice out in the market very soon is our Cork top.   We planned to launch with our logo on top of the wooden closure but Tappi was late, so we launched with a plain wooden top, then we got the logo wooden tops in and Tappi ran us out again, we switched back to the plain top and they ran out of those even though our orders had been in since 2018.  We are now getting ready to bottle with black mono-bloc corks as they have nothing else for us to use, so either shut down or keep rolling.   Our wooden corks are supposed to here mid-august and then we will be in stock again.  So the next odd thing will be the cork change for a few runs before going back to what we wanted to do originally, bottom line Tappi couldnt keep up with our volume.

 

We are moving into our six year whiskeys this October, we will not release those until our spring release and those will be our first age stated whiskey at 6 years old.  From that point, you can assume that our Bottled in Bonds will remain 4.5-5.5 years old and then you will see our 6 year, 8 year and 10 year aged stated expressions.  

 

One last PSA...  we are picking up our 16 year Bourbon old barrel pick from Willett TODAY.  That is the barrel we (Pat, Shane, Drew, Bill Thomas, Jared Hyman) selected from 15 barrels for the American Cancer Society at the #fu~KCancer #Bourboncrusaders event last year.  We will be placing that in a super special bottle with the whole story line of the event.  The bottling purpose is to see how much money can be raised from one barrel of whiskey to fight cancer (original cost + final bottling cost), which is all going to charity.  The bottles will start out $1000 each and there will only be barely 100 bottles.   The original barrel was donated by Willett, the auction cost was $45,000, hopefully we can more than double that for 100% charity towards fighting cancer. 

 

This technically will be the first and last single barrel of whiskey that we didn't make that we will bottle for WTD.  Its a special cause for us, we have some team members here fighting cancer, like our very own purchasing manager Denise Young, mother of 2 and barely into her 30's and a lot of us here have family fighting the fight.   We just ask that you spread the word about the charity bottle, we understand its not for everyone to own one, donate when you can.   We are also going to try and maybe sell parts of a bottle for those that want to donate but cant spend the $1000.   

 

Later in the year if we have bottles left.  We will divide the bottle up into 100 ml quantities at a private ticketed event for $150 - those folks will come in for a nice dinner and we will crack open some bottles, enjoy the 16 year old Bourbon and everyone will leave with a 100 ml bottle and a happy heart , as we will then give the full donation amount raised to the fight against Cancer that night.

 

Sorry for the long message - 

 

Shane Baker

Wilderness Trail Distillery

Co-Founder

 

 

[@KYWhiskyWTD]

3 hours ago, WildernessTrace said:

That one slipped out on us..  it is actually a Bottled in Bond, that is why it shares the same batch number D02 (2nd batch bottled in April).   If you dig through some old social media, you will find that we considered releasing a 92-94 proof small batch (that was the base label), thus the reason for the non-BIB label, however at the last minute (literally), we decided to stick with the higher proof of a BIB for both our Bourbons, the single barrel wheat and small batch rye.   We already had labels printed for the lower proof and THOUGHT we had removed them from inventory but somehow a box remained and was grabbed and a certain amount of bottles got into cases before we caught it.   The confusion from our bottling line was simply it was a black label and looked the same!   We again thought we captured all of them but a few rare unicorns that made it out.   We decided to let it go as it isn't really mislabeled as it stands, it just doesn't have the BIB designation on it.  

 

Also all of our whiskeys are non-chill filtered, that is normally stated on the back of the bottle but for the lower proof small batch we put that up front.  Right now we have no intentions of offering any Wilderness Trail Bourbon lower than 100 proof, bottled in bond.  We might be introducing our Rye Whiskey as a Bottled in Bond as right now we have kept it as Cask Strength. 

 

Another temporary variation you will notice out in the market very soon is our Cork top.   We planned to launch with our logo on top of the wooden closure but Tappi was late, so we launched with a plain wooden top, then we got the logo wooden tops in and Tappi ran us out again, we switched back to the plain top and they ran out of those even though our orders had been in since 2018.  We are now getting ready to bottle with black mono-bloc corks as they have nothing else for us to use, so either shut down or keep rolling.   Our wooden corks are supposed to here mid-august and then we will be in stock again.  So the next odd thing will be the cork change for a few runs before going back to what we wanted to do originally, bottom line Tappi couldnt keep up with our volume.

 

We are moving into our six year whiskeys this October, we will not release those until our spring release and those will be our first age stated whiskey at 6 years old.  From that point, you can assume that our Bottled in Bonds will remain 4.5-5.5 years old and then you will see our 6 year, 8 year and 10 year aged stated expressions.  

 

One last PSA...  we are picking up our 16 year Bourbon old barrel pick from Willett TODAY.  That is the barrel we (Pat, Shane, Drew, Bill Thomas, Jared Hyman) selected from 15 barrels for the American Cancer Society at the #fu~KCancer #Bourboncrusaders event last year.  We will be placing that in a super special bottle with the whole story line of the event.  The bottling purpose is to see how much money can be raised from one barrel of whiskey to fight cancer (original cost + final bottling cost), which is all going to charity.  The bottles will start out $1000 each and there will only be barely 100 bottles.   The original barrel was donated by Willett, the auction cost was $45,000, hopefully we can more than double that for 100% charity towards fighting cancer. 

 

This technically will be the first and last single barrel of whiskey that we didn't make that we will bottle for WTD.  Its a special cause for us, we have some team members here fighting cancer, like our very own purchasing manager Denise Young, mother of 2 and barely into her 30's and a lot of us here have family fighting the fight.   We just ask that you spread the word about the charity bottle, we understand its not for everyone to own one, donate when you can.   We are also going to try and maybe sell parts of a bottle for those that want to donate but cant spend the $1000.   

 

Later in the year if we have bottles left.  We will divide the bottle up into 100 ml quantities at a private ticketed event for $150 - those folks will come in for a nice dinner and we will crack open some bottles, enjoy the 16 year old Bourbon and everyone will leave with a 100 ml bottle and a happy heart , as we will then give the full donation amount raised to the fight against Cancer that night.

 

Sorry for the long message - 

 

Shane Baker

Wilderness Trail Distillery

Co-Founder

 

 

Actually, the charity bottles will be more like $1200-$1500 each out of the gift shop, they will have some industry legends signatures on them as well as .  A few select charities will get some bottles donated to them to help raise money through their events and the majority will be sold in the gift shop. 

 

The barrel only weighed 218 lbs, so we estimate there is only 60-65 bottles (750 ml) left in there @122 proof.   On the cuff, I know that seems outrageous, but The goal is to raise money for fighting cancer, the outrageous disease tearing apart so many lives.  

[kcgumbohead]

On 7/23/2019 at 10:31 AM, WildernessTrace said:

That one slipped out on us..  it is actually a Bottled in Bond, that is why it shares the same batch number D02 (2nd batch bottled in April).   If you dig through some old social media, you will find that we considered releasing a 92-94 proof small batch (that was the base label), thus the reason for the non-BIB label, however at the last minute (literally), we decided to stick with the higher proof of a BIB for both our Bourbons, the single barrel wheat and small batch rye.   We already had labels printed for the lower proof and THOUGHT we had removed them from inventory but somehow a box remained and was grabbed and a certain amount of bottles got into cases before we caught it.   The confusion from our bottling line was simply it was a black label and looked the same!   We again thought we captured all of them but a few rare unicorns that made it out.   We decided to let it go as it isn't really mislabeled as it stands, it just doesn't have the BIB designation on it.  

 

Also all of our whiskeys are non-chill filtered, that is normally stated on the back of the bottle but for the lower proof small batch we put that up front.  Right now we have no intentions of offering any Wilderness Trail Bourbon lower than 100 proof, bottled in bond.  We might be introducing our Rye Whiskey as a Bottled in Bond as right now we have kept it as Cask Strength. 

 

Another temporary variation you will notice out in the market very soon is our Cork top.   We planned to launch with our logo on top of the wooden closure but Tappi was late, so we launched with a plain wooden top, then we got the logo wooden tops in and Tappi ran us out again, we switched back to the plain top and they ran out of those even though our orders had been in since 2018.  We are now getting ready to bottle with black mono-bloc corks as they have nothing else for us to use, so either shut down or keep rolling.   Our wooden corks are supposed to here mid-august and then we will be in stock again.  So the next odd thing will be the cork change for a few runs before going back to what we wanted to do originally, bottom line Tappi couldnt keep up with our volume.

 

We are moving into our six year whiskeys this October, we will not release those until our spring release and those will be our first age stated whiskey at 6 years old.  From that point, you can assume that our Bottled in Bonds will remain 4.5-5.5 years old and then you will see our 6 year, 8 year and 10 year aged stated expressions.  

 

One last PSA...  we are picking up our 16 year Bourbon old barrel pick from Willett TODAY.  That is the barrel we (Pat, Shane, Drew, Bill Thomas, Jared Hyman) selected from 15 barrels for the American Cancer Society at the #fu~KCancer #Bourboncrusaders event last year.  We will be placing that in a super special bottle with the whole story line of the event.  The bottling purpose is to see how much money can be raised from one barrel of whiskey to fight cancer (original cost + final bottling cost), which is all going to charity.  The bottles will start out $1000 each and there will only be barely 100 bottles.   The original barrel was donated by Willett, the auction cost was $45,000, hopefully we can more than double that for 100% charity towards fighting cancer. 

 

This technically will be the first and last single barrel of whiskey that we didn't make that we will bottle for WTD.  Its a special cause for us, we have some team members here fighting cancer, like our very own purchasing manager Denise Young, mother of 2 and barely into her 30's and a lot of us here have family fighting the fight.   We just ask that you spread the word about the charity bottle, we understand its not for everyone to own one, donate when you can.   We are also going to try and maybe sell parts of a bottle for those that want to donate but cant spend the $1000.   

 

Later in the year if we have bottles left.  We will divide the bottle up into 100 ml quantities at a private ticketed event for $150 - those folks will come in for a nice dinner and we will crack open some bottles, enjoy the 16 year old Bourbon and everyone will leave with a 100 ml bottle and a happy heart , as we will then give the full donation amount raised to the fight against Cancer that night.

 

Sorry for the long message - 

 

Shane Baker

Wilderness Trail Distillery

Co-Founder

 

 

Kudos on the no release of anything sub-100p and  NCF. I am a fan and consumer of WTr Rye and while I am also a BIG fan of BiB,  I would hate to see the BP version cease.  I hope if you do a bib rye it is in ADDITION to the BP and not in place of it as that BP rye is a very nice whiskey.

[TimeWillTell]

On 7/23/2019 at 9:31 AM, WildernessTrace said:

That one slipped out on us..  it is actually a Bottled in Bond, that is why it shares the same batch number D02 (2nd batch bottled in April).   If you dig through some old social media, you will find that we considered releasing a 92-94 proof small batch (that was the base label), thus the reason for the non-BIB label, however at the last minute (literally), we decided to stick with the higher proof of a BIB for both our Bourbons, the single barrel wheat and small batch rye.   We already had labels printed for the lower proof and THOUGHT we had removed them from inventory but somehow a box remained and was grabbed and a certain amount of bottles got into cases before we caught it.   The confusion from our bottling line was simply it was a black label and looked the same!   We again thought we captured all of them but a few rare unicorns that made it out.   We decided to let it go as it isn't really mislabeled as it stands, it just doesn't have the BIB designation on it.  

 

Also all of our whiskeys are non-chill filtered, that is normally stated on the back of the bottle but for the lower proof small batch we put that up front.  Right now we have no intentions of offering any Wilderness Trail Bourbon lower than 100 proof, bottled in bond.  We might be introducing our Rye Whiskey as a Bottled in Bond as right now we have kept it as Cask Strength. 

 

Another temporary variation you will notice out in the market very soon is our Cork top.   We planned to launch with our logo on top of the wooden closure but Tappi was late, so we launched with a plain wooden top, then we got the logo wooden tops in and Tappi ran us out again, we switched back to the plain top and they ran out of those even though our orders had been in since 2018.  We are now getting ready to bottle with black mono-bloc corks as they have nothing else for us to use, so either shut down or keep rolling.   Our wooden corks are supposed to here mid-august and then we will be in stock again.  So the next odd thing will be the cork change for a few runs before going back to what we wanted to do originally, bottom line Tappi couldnt keep up with our volume.

 

We are moving into our six year whiskeys this October, we will not release those until our spring release and those will be our first age stated whiskey at 6 years old.  From that point, you can assume that our Bottled in Bonds will remain 4.5-5.5 years old and then you will see our 6 year, 8 year and 10 year aged stated expressions.  

 

One last PSA...  we are picking up our 16 year Bourbon old barrel pick from Willett TODAY.  That is the barrel we (Pat, Shane, Drew, Bill Thomas, Jared Hyman) selected from 15 barrels for the American Cancer Society at the #fu~KCancer #Bourboncrusaders event last year.  We will be placing that in a super special bottle with the whole story line of the event.  The bottling purpose is to see how much money can be raised from one barrel of whiskey to fight cancer (original cost + final bottling cost), which is all going to charity.  The bottles will start out $1000 each and there will only be barely 100 bottles.   The original barrel was donated by Willett, the auction cost was $45,000, hopefully we can more than double that for 100% charity towards fighting cancer. 

 

This technically will be the first and last single barrel of whiskey that we didn't make that we will bottle for WTD.  Its a special cause for us, we have some team members here fighting cancer, like our very own purchasing manager Denise Young, mother of 2 and barely into her 30's and a lot of us here have family fighting the fight.   We just ask that you spread the word about the charity bottle, we understand its not for everyone to own one, donate when you can.   We are also going to try and maybe sell parts of a bottle for those that want to donate but cant spend the $1000.   

 

Later in the year if we have bottles left.  We will divide the bottle up into 100 ml quantities at a private ticketed event for $150 - those folks will come in for a nice dinner and we will crack open some bottles, enjoy the 16 year old Bourbon and everyone will leave with a 100 ml bottle and a happy heart , as we will then give the full donation amount raised to the fight against Cancer that night.

 

Sorry for the long message - 

 

Shane Baker

Wilderness Trail Distillery

Co-Founder

 

 

Please please please don't get rid of the cask strength rye!!! 

[@KYWhiskyWTD]

On 7/25/2019 at 1:00 PM, kcgumbohead said:

Kudos on the no release of anything sub-100p and  NCF. I am a fan and consumer of WTr Rye and while I am also a BIG fan of BiB,  I would hate to see the BP version cease.  I hope if you do a bib rye it is in ADDITION to the BP and not in place of it as that BP rye is a very nice whiskey.

IF we did, it would be in addition for certain.  thank you for the feedback.

[@KYWhiskyWTD]

On 7/25/2019 at 11:23 PM, TimeWillTell said:

Please please please don't get rid of the cask strength rye!!! 

no worries, it is only getting older with each release.. 

[TimeWillTell]

On 7/29/2019 at 4:39 PM, @KYWhiskyWTD said:

no worries, it is only getting older with each release.. 

Do you release the cask rye periodically throughout the year? Or usually about same time each year?