Chattanooga's Latest Experiment Is a New Take on Whiskey & Cola

Chattanooga Whiskey is taking whiskey and cola back to its roots with an unusual approach: infusing a bourbon with a series of all-natural ingredients that were used to create soda-fountain cola in its early days.

Unlike some of Chattanooga’s other experimental releases, which use the distillery’s flagship high-malt “Barrel 91” bourbon recipe, this one starts off with a blend of four bourbon mashbills. The mashbill has a strong component of malted grains, with the recipe including eight types—pale malted rye, floor-malted barley, pale malted wheat, honey malted barley, caramel malted barley, Munich malted rye, caramel malted wheat, and pale malted barley—alongside unmalted yellow corn. The whiskeys were blended together for this release.

After assembling the blend, distiller Grant McCracken infused it with a mix of 10 botanicals, specifically targeting ingredients that were commonly used to make cola back in the 19th and 20th centuries. The list includes kola nuts (a type of nut with high caffeine content from the African rainforests, which is where the name “cola” came from), citrus peel, dried cherries, sarsaparilla, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, mace, cardamom, and marshmallow root (a type of plant historically used to cure sore throats. After infusing the bourbon for a week using nearly 200 pounds of these botanicals, McCracken sweetened the whiskey with cane sugar and cut the final product to 45% ABV.

For McCracken, a fair bit of inspiration came from the role the distillery’s home base of Chattanooga, Tennessee played in the popularization of cola as an everyday beverage. The drink got its start in the late 19th century as a medicinal remedy—hence the inclusion of the caffeine-laden kola nut, throat-soothing marshmallow root, and other herbal ingredients—that local pharmacists served via soda fountains. But it wasn’t until 1899, when two lawyers from Chattanooga named Joseph Whitehead and Benjamin Thomas got the idea to sell cola by the bottle, that the drink really took off on a national scale: The pair opened the very first Coca-Cola bottling company in the city in 1899, and by the following year Coca-Cola was available for purchase in every state in the U.S.

“Chattanooga made cola portable, put it in a bottle, and turned it into a legacy,” says McCraken. “This Experimental Batch is a throwback to that time—when all-natural infusions, including those with real kola nut, were the norm.”

This product belongs to Chattanooga’s Experimental Batches Series, which includes some of the distillery’s most interesting whiskeys. Previous expressions have featured alternative grains, pre-Prohibition production methods, and interesting barrel finishes, just to name a few. But infusions are also popular here, including Chattanooga’s recent bourbon-barreled limecello, pecan-infused bourbon liqueur, triple-distilled honey-infused bourbon liqueur, and citrus-infused amaro.

How Does It Taste?

Chattanooga Whiskey Experimental Batch 045: Kola-Infused Bourbon Liqueur

ABV: 45%
SRP: $50
Availability: At the distillery and online

At first blush, you could be easily forgiven for mistaking this for a high-end soda. The nose is reminiscent of Cherry Vanilla Coca-Cola on steroids, offering complex notes of vanilla bean, Christmas spice, toasted marshmallow, orangeade, and root beer. The palate is notably viscous, adding Marshmallow Fluff, sassafras, black cherry, ginger, toasted sugar, and a little bit of prickly heat from the bourbon. The spices and some of the heat carries over to the finish, which is a bit short. Try it over ice or in a cocktail.

Head to Head

Chattanooga touts that Batch 045 is a “pre-built cocktail in a bottle,” but it also recommends trying it in a Chatt & Koke—a tongue-in-cheek riff on a Jack & Coke made with Kola Infused and soda water. To see how well this cocktail stands up, we tasted it next to a Highball made with Chattanooga’s flagship Barrel 91 bourbon and cola.

In the glass, the cocktail looks quite a bit lighter than the other one—it’s closer to an Arnold Palmer than Coca-Cola—but taste-wise, it holds its own surprisingly well. The soda water helps thin out some of the syrupy viscosity, while sanding down and rounding out the sharper spice. It’s an easygoing sipper that, though missing some of the bite of a traditional Whiskey & Coke, does offer up some pleasant flavors.