Spotlight on… Castle & Key.

Barrel Global works with exceptional distilleries to bring you the opportunity to buy your own whiskey cask. Whether it’s just one for a celebration or to create your own exclusive portfolio, our team can help you curate your collection.

In this series of articles, we take a closer look at the distilleries we work with, from their location to acknowledging the awards they have received for their products.

In this new edition of the series, we bring you ‘Castle & Key.’

Site and location:

Located in Kentucky, the distillery sits on McCracken Pike, approximately 57 miles east of Louisville in Frankfort, just east of the Kentucky River, surrounded by glorious woodland. In fact, this distillery is worth a visit, even if you only like the outdoors and nature! At the distillery itself, you can take a tour of the distillery and the grounds and taste the liquid itself.

Castle & Key also has "Castle & Key 502" in Louisville, a retail outlet for the distillery. Here, you can buy merchandise, whiskey, and cocktails to ease the spending.

In addition to all the above, Castle & Key can cater for private events and even provide accommodation within the local area, which is owned by the distillery. What more could you want?

The Range:

A young distillery in production terms, Castle & Key has been producing spirit since 2018, and in 2020, they released "Restoration Rye," their first aged spirit.

Since then, they have gone on to create a wide range of both white and brown spirits. We’re all about the whiskey, so we’ll highlight some of the whiskey and bourbon from them below:

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Restoration Rye

Mashbill: 17% yellow corn, 63% Rye, and 20% malted barley.

This dram, created to celebrate the restoration of the historic distillery and grounds has won various awards, including:

2023 –Bartender Spirit Awards - Gold

2023 –Denver International Spirits Competition – Double Gold

2022 –Ultimate Spirits Challenge – 91 points

2021 –San Francisco Spirits Competition – Gold

Castle & Key Experimental Series

These are limited-edition offerings in which the distillery experiments with different mashbills, barrels, and blends. The latest offering is "Series 2024—Vino de Naranja."

With a mash-bill of 17% yellow corn, 63% Rye, and 20% malted barley, then finished for 11 months in Vino de Naranja barrels after 3 yrs. in new American Oak, this expression boasts nose and palate profiles of chocolate, orange, shortbread,baking spices, and some notes of sherry, leather, and dark fruit.

This limited edition is one to try at an abv of 57.9% and only 36 barrels produced.

Cask Strength Wheated Bourbon

Mashbill: 73% white corn, 17% malted Barley, 10% White Winter Wheat

Bottled at 52.9% abv, this expression is 7yrs old.

This sounds delightful with flavors of cereals, pastries, citrus, tropical fruit, nuts, and spices.

109 barrels produced.

Small Batch Bourbon Whiskey

This award-winning bourbon has the following mashbill:

73% white corn, 10% rye, 17% Malted barley

With 11 batches since 2022, most of this popular expression is sold out. However, some of Batch 1 2024 is available at the distillery (at the point of publication), and Batch 4 2023 is available online (at the point of publication).

Awards:

2022 –Bartender Spirit Awards – Gold

2022 –New York International Spirits Competition – Double Gold

2022 –Ultimate Spirits Challenge – 95 points

With another 4 or 5 expressions in the range, we hope you can see why we are so happy to be working with such a great brand.

What else can we say about Castle & Key?

Going back to the beginning of this article, we mentioned the grounds. Well, this is a distillery just awash with history.

Originally built in 1887 by Colonel Edmund Haynes Jr., this European-architecture-inspired site had a castle, a sunken garden, and a springhouse. However, in 1920, our old foe, Prohibition, came along, and it was forced to close. Multiple changes of owners over the following decades led to the site's ruin.

In 2012, Will Arvin visited the site, having found photographs of the old distillery. He fell for the site and decided to return it to its original purpose.

In 2014, the Castle & Key team purchased the distillery and, with other like-minded people, worked to restore it to the living, breathing whiskey-producing machine we see today.

With a nod to Colonel Taylor's lead on excellence, the team strives to make thehighest-quality product with the highest-quality ingredients and attitude.

The team works with local growers, such as Walnut Grove Farms, to produce the corn and heirloom grains used to give the spirit a distinctive profile.

With casks from the Speyside Cooperage in Scotland and warehousing on-site and in the locale, the distillery can really maximize and experiment with the range of flavors it can bring out in its whiskies/bourbons.

So, visit the Castle & Key website for more details about the distillery, and of course, visit our contact pages if you would like to add some of the Castle& Key spirit to your portfolio. Castle & Key - Home (castleandkey.com)

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