Castle & Key is focused on transparency and quality in our spirits production. With these core paradigms, our team knew the only way to produce the spirits that would meet this expectation was to produce everything from scratch. This allows us to monitor and control every step in our process to the highest standard.
This perspective is exemplified in our grains selection with our team identifying and acquiring the best corn, wheat, rye, and malted barley available within the industry. Working closely with locals partners such as Walnut Grove Farms to grow white corn, yellow corn, and heirloom grains grants our whiskies a distinct terroir.
Our team was able to reintegrate a variety of components from the historic distillery in our production process with the support of Clark Mechanical. These vessels were connected to our modern Vendome stills, the gold standard in distillation equipment. Even after six years of distillation, our team is constantly upgrading and expanding our operations with a focus on quality and the future of Castle & Key spirits.
The aging process begins with a selection of the highest quality cooperage, Castle & Key has found this with our partner, Speyside Cooperage. Speyside Cooperage mirrors our focus on attention to detail and quality to the utmost extent by constructing our barrels from fully matured American white oak staves with a longer than average seasoning time. After construction, our barrels are toasted and then charred to provide our whiskies the best opportunity to become exceptional.
Once our barrels are filled they are placed in one of our four warehouses, each of which offers a dynamic maturation climate that builds diverse flavors. While two of these warehouses are historic to our distillery and grounds we also utilize facilities in Versailles and Nicholasville, Kentucky that provides us with three slightly variant weather conditions. As our whiskies age, Castle & Key is constantly evaluating their progress with patience as we wait for our spirits to reach their minimum age statement. For traditional bourbon this means a baseline of at least four years old with wheated bourbon necessitating additional age.
Taking a slightly different approach, every batch of our whiskey is built with the intent to focus on creating high-quality expressions that showcase the overall complexity and quality of each release, instead of striving for one singular flavor profile. This perspective is continued in our proofing approach as each batch is bottled at the ABV/Proof that is most ideal for that specific vintage of whiskey. Each bottle demonstrates this by being labeled with both the distinct year of bottling and batch.
