“The purpose of the Heaven Hill Heritage Collection is to showcase Heaven Hill’s skill at bringing ultra-aged whiskeys to the market,” Conor O’Driscoll tells Maxim matter-of-factly. “We brought this Heritage Collection line into fruition because we wanted to show that we have the skill, we have the warehouse, we have the knowledge to bring big age statements to the world that people will drink and enjoy—and not just kind of choke down and say, ‘Well I just paid $300 for this bottle, I’m going to pretend I like it.’ “The feedback we get on these is like, ‘Holy crap, I didn’t know 19-year-old whiskey could taste this good. I didn’t know 20-year-old corn whiskey could taste this good!’”
The venerated Master Distiller has lead the eminent Kentucky distillery since 2019 when he took the reins over from legendary whiskey-maker Parker Beam. Beyond the heavy lifting of crafting the new juice at their Bernheim Distillery in Louisville, another large portion of weight falling on O’Driscoll’s Irish shoulders is digging his way through Heaven Hill’s two-million barrels aging across almost 70 rickhouses, and finding gems worthy of elevating beyond others. Of course this onus does not fall on O’Driscoll’s shoulders alone, rather he depends upon what he dubs an “innovation panel” which makes the massive decisions on when a barrel has reached its maturation peak (aka when to stop aging them), which to blend together for marriage, etc.
“We’re tasting multiple candidates for these Heritage Collections, and in our innovation panel there is strong veto power and they can be like, ‘No, this is not good enough to have in the Heritage Collection,’” O’Driscoll continues. Heaven Hill’s seventh Master Distiller wants to ensure their halo Heritage Collection label doesn’t fall into the same trap some over-aged whiskeys can suffer. “There are a lot of very expensive whiskeys out there with big aged statements that very often tastes like a dirty old stick,” he sighs.
Introduced in 2018 with a 27-year-old Kentucky Straight Bourbon, the oldest whiskey ever from Heaven Hill, they followed up the inaugural Heritage Collection two years later with a special 85th Anniversary bottle. Last year’s Heritage Collection, an 18-Year Old Straight Bourbon, was also selected for Maxim’s Spirit of the Week. Now its sixth edition comes this spring with the oldest wheat whiskey Heaven Hill has ever bottled. Heaven Hill Heritage Collection 19-Year-Old Kentucky Straight Wheat Whiskey uses the distillery’s rarest mash bill: a 51-percent wheat / 37-percent corn / 12-percent malted barley wheated whiskey they only brew up half of one day per year. This is the same scarce recipe that is released as Bernheim Original Wheat Whiskey aged seven years, as well as a Bernheim Original Barrel Proof normally aged between 7-8 years.
As one of the few distilleries to brew six different mash bills, not including experimental outings, Heaven Hill enjoys many avenues to assess and play across grain bills, barrels, years aging, finishes, etc. Allowing this particular wheated grain bill to age 19 years is a boon only a distillery as robust as Heaven Hill — the largest family-owned and operated distillery in America — can boast. Heaven Hill Heritage Collection 19-Year-Old Kentucky Straight Wheat Whiskey blends 277 barrels produced in August and September of 2005, aged for almost two decades on the 5th and 6th floors of Rickhouse Y. After extensive tastings to pinpoint the ideal bottling strength, O’Driscoll and his team honed in on bottling at 50-percent ABV, because that’s where they believed the whiskey “shines the brightest.”
“The consensus has to be that this whiskey is good enough to go in a $300 bottle, and we are going to put our name right across the front of it. And people are going to hand over their hard-earned money, and expect to get a whiskey that they’re going to enjoy drinking. “That’s Rule One: are you enjoying what you’re drinking?” O’Driscoll asks. “There is no rule two.” Find Heaven Hill Heritage Collection 19-Year-Old Kentucky Straight Wheat Whiskey for its SRP of $300 if you can.
Follow Deputy Editor Nicolas Stecher on Instagram at @nickstecher and @boozeoftheday.
