New American Whiskeys: Great Jones x Wölffer Estate, Old Line PX Sherry Finish, and Casey Jones Total Eclipse Bourbon
February 26, 2024 –––––– Danny Brandon
The past week saw three interesting new releases from smaller players around the country, including a couple of bourbons and a cask-finished American single malt. Manhattan's Great Jones Distillery has a release finished in casks from Long Island winery Wölffer Estate, though Great Jones currently uses sourced juice as its distillery has been open only since 2021. From Maryland's Old Line Spirits comes a sherry cask-finished American single malt, in keeping with Old Line's dedication to the style. And Casey Jones Distillery, named for the famed Kentucky moonshiner who made what was said be be Al Capone's favorite whiskey, has a new straight bourbon.
Great Jones x Wölffer Estate Cask Finish
Great Jones Distilling Co., the first whiskey distillery to open in Manhattan since Prohibition, is a relative newcomer to cask finishing. The distillery first forayed into the style with a pineau de charentes finished bourbon released in honor of the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat last August. It followed up in late October with a smoky 7 year old bourbon finished in Laphroaig casks. Now, it has joined forces with the Hamptons-based Wölffer Estate Vineyard to finish a bourbon in wine casks.
The new expression started as barrels of 4–7 year old straight bourbon, distilled by sister distillery Black Dirt prior to Great Jones’s official launch in 2021. Each barrel was re-casked and rested for over a year in Wölffer Estate’s Caya cabernet franc barrels. The resulting whiskey was cut to 44% ABV using water from the Catskill Mountains.
Great Jones x Wölffer Estate Cask Finish retails at $50 and is available at New York retailers, the distillery, and Wölffer Estate’s winery on Long Island. Bottles are also available online with shipping to New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
Old Line PX Sherry Cask Finish
Baltimore, Maryland’s veteran-owned Old Line Spirits has a whiskey lineup that’s composed entirely of American single malts, most of which feature a cask finish of some type. That blueprint has been a successful one so far, as its expressions have never scored below 90 points with our tasting panel.
Old Line’s latest expression is the ninth entry in its Double Oak Series. It’s an American single malt that was aged for at least 4 years in new char No.-04 American oak barrels before spending an additional 6 months in freshly emptied PX sherry casks. The liquid was distilled by Middle West Spirits in Ohio, using a proprietary set of malts designated by Old Line. It was bottled at 50% ABV.
This is the second time Old Line has employed sherry casks, though its first release was finished in oloroso casks rather than the sweeter Pedro Ximénez variety used this time around. It’s priced at $65 and is available online at the distillery website, with shipping to 40 states. It will also have limited retail availability in Maryland, Delaware, and D.C.
Casey Jones Total Eclipse Kentucky Straight Bourbon
Though it makes plenty of bourbon and rye, Casey Jones’s moonshine has the curious designation of being named the “Official Spirits of the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse” by the Kentucky state senate. That’s because its home base in Hopkinsville was smack dab in the middle of the eclipse’s path, and the distillery served as a prime rally point for onlookers. Now, 7 years later, another eclipse is due to take place over Hopkinsville in April, and Casey Jones is looking to celebrate it—this time, with a new whiskey.
Casey Jones Total Eclipse is a four-grain bourbon bottled at 50% ABV. The initial batch is a blend of distillate from Bardstown Bourbon Co. and Kentucky Artisan Distillery, which also produces liquid for Jefferson’s and house label Whiskey Row. Future batches of Total Eclipse will be distilled on-site using the distillery’s square-shaped pot still—with a mashbill of 75% corn, 10% wheat, 10% rye, and 5% malted barley. Each bottle may have a slightly different age statement, but all were aged for a minimum of 2 years.
Total Eclipse is currently available for purchase online and at retailers in Kentucky and Oklahoma, with a suggested retail price of $50. Casey Jones plans to unveil a new cask strength single barrel expression as a distillery exclusive on April 6th, and is set to throw an eclipse-watching party, complete with cocktails, two days after that.
