Bardstown Bourbon Company Goes Further With Two New Cask-Finished Whiskeys
The Kentucky distillery turns to Isle of Jura single malt casks and rare Pacific Northwest oak for two limited releases that push its blending program into more experimental territory.
There is a particular pleasure in watching a whiskey maker become increasingly comfortable with its own curiosity. For Bardstown Bourbon Company, experimentation has become less of a novelty and more of a defining part of its approach, particularly through the sourced and cask-finished blends developed by master blender Dan Callaway and his team. The distillery’s latest releases continue that trajectory, pairing two very different finishing experiments that take bourbon well beyond the familiar boundaries of charred American oak.
Arriving August 21 at specialty retailers across the country, the new releases are Lochs of Jura Barrel Finish and 2026 Discovery, both priced at a suggested $140. They come shortly after the surprisingly successful Victoria Pineapple Finish, another example of Bardstown’s willingness to explore flavors and maturation techniques that sit outside conventional bourbon expectations.
Lochs of Jura is perhaps the more unusual of the two. Bardstown has blended bourbon and rye before, but here the combination receives an extended secondary maturation in casks that previously held single malt Scotch from the Isle of Jura. The whiskey brings together 49 percent 11-year-old Indiana bourbon, 39 percent 10-year-old Indiana rye and 21 percent 12-year-old Kentucky bourbon, before spending 32 months in ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks.
The result is a whiskey that retains the weight and sweetness expected from bourbon while taking on a distinctly different character from its Scottish cask history. At 104 proof, it opens with oak and berries before moving toward dried fruit, fresh apple, salinity and the warmth of apple cobbler. There is even a subtle suggestion of smoke, although it remains restrained enough to keep the bourbon at the centre of the experience.
The 2026 Discovery takes a different route. The blend combines 10- and 11-year-old bourbons from Indiana and Kentucky with a younger seven-year-old Kentucky bourbon, before receiving a four-month finish in custom-made garryana oak barrels sourced from Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Garryana, a species of oak native to the Pacific Northwest, has become increasingly interesting to American whiskey producers for the pronounced character it can impart during maturation.
At 112.8 proof, Discovery is the more assertive expression, with toasted wood and cinnamon leading into layers of butterscotch, maple, flamed orange and cherry syrup. The relatively short secondary maturation demonstrates how influential the finishing barrel can be when the wood itself carries such a distinctive personality.
What makes these releases interesting is not simply the novelty of their barrels. Bardstown is using finishing as a way to ask what bourbon can become when its familiar foundations are placed somewhere less predictable. Lochs of Jura explores the influence of another whisky tradition, while Discovery looks toward an increasingly important source of American oak. Neither attempts to disguise the bourbon beneath the experiment. Instead, both use the finishing process to add another layer to it.
That may ultimately be where Bardstown’s blending program is at its most compelling. Rather than treating bourbon as a fixed category with a narrow set of rules, the distillery continues to treat it as a starting point—one that can be stretched, blended and matured into something considerably more unexpected.
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