Inside Preservation Distillery's Immaculata Blend That Took a Year to Get Right

The second release of Very Olde St. Nick Immaculata is built around a premise that runs counter to how expensive bourbon is sold. The old whiskey in the bottle isn’t the point. The younger whiskey is.

Preservation Distillery assembled Immaculata’s 2026 release around its 8 year old wheated pot-distilled bourbon, and a 10 year old Kentucky high rye made for Preservation, and blended it with 18 year old sourced Kentucky bourbon. The 18-year stocks came from the same barrels—no tankers here—that appeared in Notorious, a useful reference point for anyone who's familiar with that bottle. (Fun fact: though it says 18-year on the bottle, the liquid actually turned 19 during the bottling phase.) The Immaculata blend comes in at 118.2 proof, which is cask strength and unfiltered, and will retail for $260 when it releases at the distillery this month before moving into select markets later in the year.

Most people will focus on the inclusion of the 18 year, but that’s not the bottle’s best part. “It’s how good Preservation bourbon is with older bourbon in it,” says Preservation’s general manager Kyle Lloyd, who oversees blending. Consider the 18-year as seasoning; the 8 and 10 year olds are the foundation.

Preservation Distillery’s vast inventory of sourced vintage stock will eventually run out, and this blend is meant to show that what comes next is equal or greater in terms of quality. “We have the ability to have vintage single barrel releases, and found that our wide variety of stocks and our ability to blend them is great. Lloyd is like a great chef who came into a well-stocked kitchen,” says Preservation Distillery owner and proprietor Marci Palatella.

The 8-year wheated pot distilled was first released as a standalone expression at the end of 2024, and appeared once before under the Very Old St. Nick banner, in Christmas Dream in 2025. This release pushes further, increasing the percentage of the 8 year old in the blend. The aim is to “foreshadow what our pot-distilled bourbon will be like when it gets really old,” Lloyd says.

“Our pot distilled keeps getting better and better,” says Palatella. “When it was younger, it was grainy, but as it’s matured, all those delicious dessert flavors are coming out. It’s really getting good now.”

Getting the blend right involved tasting more than 100 barrels, dozens of blend iterations, and took more than a year. “We’d mark barrels to try again in two or three months, constantly evaluating whether they were at the right stage in their development,” says Palatella. “Sometimes, one season later, something magical can happen and everything clicks. Palatella and Lloyd only used three barrels in this batch, though a few batches in this line are slated for release. Putting together one excellent blend is difficult, but aiming for excellence and getting four or five batches aligned and perfect is a completely different beast.

As for the proof point, Palatella long preferred Preservation products to be big and bold, so Lloyd blends on flavor, then reduces proof incrementally to maintain viscosity. Too high and it’s too oily. Drop too far, and it thins out. So 118.2 was the sweet spot; the final blend sat at 121 before he brought it down in stages.

That step-down approach reflects how differently pot distillate behaves. Preservation’s pot-still bourbon carries roughly three times the ester content of a typical column-distilled spirit, which puts its congener load closer to brandy territory. Add water too fast, says Lloyd, and the long ester chains react in multiple directions, pushing the liquid toward soapy or saponified flavors, a well-documented hazard in rum and brandy that demands equal care here. Lloyd makes his proof cuts three days apart. "We're working with something different," he says, "and we have to think differently."

How’s the final product taste? Immaculata is truly sublime, a rich, full dram that’ll leave you wanting more.

The nose opens on salted praline and real butterscotch—not your typical generic “caramel”—with vanilla and golden raisin underneath. The palate is immediately about texture: intense viscosity and heavy oil. There’s a fantastic horehound candy note, root beer meets anise or something close to Good & Plenty. Spiced plum surfaces in the mid-palate. The finish is lengthy, driven by very old oak that tips toward medicinal without crossing the line. Each sip is round in the way great dusty bourbon is, no sharp edges, nothing angular. It is dangerously crushable.

The 18-year adds to the complexity, sure. But Immaculata’s second release demonstrates what Preservation Distillery’s pot-distilled bourbon can do when carrying a blend. Lloyd says he can usually feel when a blend is right. “This one,” he says, “I felt in my spine.” When Palatella first tried it, she picked up a glass after tasting vintage whiskey with a visiting group. “I put my nose to it and said, ‘Wow, what’s this?’ And it was Immaculata. It was vibrant with the right viscosity and the right notes. I knew this was great.” If this is a starting point, where the brand heads as its distillate ages will be fascinating to watch.