Latest / Aussie Bourbon Lovers / Inside Maker's Mark: Cellar-Aged Secrets with Dr. Blake Layfield

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Inside Maker's Mark: Cellar-Aged Secrets with Dr. Blake Layfield · Aussie Bourbon Lovers

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Incredible flavors, even better stories. One Pour,
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10 Minutes. Aussie bourbon lovers sharing bourbon with
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Australia.
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Pop. We're drinking water tonight, not bourbon,
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because we're doing Dry July and we're taking you back tonight
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to an episode from Maker's Mark. That's right. Star Hill Farm with Dr.
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Blake Layfield. We were in the Heritage Room That amazing
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room and great memories. He set out in front of us these
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handful of bottles, which was so exciting to
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show us what the cellar-aged expression was. And we got to
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share the 2025 cellar-aged in this lineup. And this
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was pretty good fun. Yeah, we hope you enjoy hearing about it. Cheers.
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It's bad luck to cheers with water anyway, isn't it? Enjoy your
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water. Or if you're having bourbon tonight, enjoy that. Pour a cellar-aged. Please don't do
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dry. It is so exciting that we're here.
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We're joined, H, by Dr. Blake Layfield, the Master Distiller and Head of Innovation
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and Blending at Maker's Mark. We're in the Heritage Room and there's some amazing stories
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about this room. We're at Star Hill Farm in Kentucky. There's so
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many good things about today. The weather is unbelievable. We've had a good lunch,
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we've had an amazing tour here. Blake, thanks so much for jumping on our podcast
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with us to talk about— and thanks for hosting us. Yeah, this is amazing.
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Thanks so much for, for coming all the way from Australia. That is quite a
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journey, and I'm glad that we geoengineered the weather. Yes. Just for you to have
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the absolute perfect day. But we are in the Heritage Room. There's so much that
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makes bourbon unique within the history, the heritage, the culture.
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There's so many, so much background that makes each brand unique and distinct and
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different. And I think that this brand has that in spades. So much going on,
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right? Makers Mark was one of the first distilleries we visited when we came to
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America a few years ago, and it's where we fell in love with bourbon.
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So it's really great to be back here. And it's the stories that happen in
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this room, right? The burning, it's the burning of the recipes in this room.
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Yeah. In this room. Right. This is so crazy. It's so crazy.
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I love it. I love it. We love it. We love it. And we love
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the beautiful bourbons that you make as well. Tell us, it's unusual for us to
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have 3 glasses in front of us for one of our episodes, but there's a
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really good reason for that. Can you tell us what do we got here?
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Yeah. So we're going to actually taste through 3 different things. So the first
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thing we're going to taste is where everything starts for us, which is Maker's Mark
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Cask Strength. We have made Maker's Mark Cask Strength since 1953,
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have had the same mash bill, the same yeast, the same
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fermentation, the same distillation, the same maturation. And that all starts with
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Maker's Mark Cask Strength. And for many,
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many years, we've had consumers beg,
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cry, plead for an older age-stated version of
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Maker's Mark. But we didn't do that because it fundamentally
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went against our founders' taste vision. And that's what we're going to taste in glass
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number 2. We're going to taste an over-aged Maker's Mark in a traditional
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warehouse, something that the founders didn't want to— something that would be outside
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of our taste guardrails. So you get to see what isn't
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a bad whiskey, but why it doesn't meet our taste vision,
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our house style. Yep. And then we're going to say, okay,
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well, how did we do that? How did we make an older age-stated version of
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Maker's Mark, but in our way that honors and respects our,
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our founder's vision in our way? So we're going to get to actually go
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on that journey together. Okay, let's get into it. What are we starting on the—
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amazing. So we're going to start on the left. This is cask strength Maker's Mark.
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This is aged for 7 years and 3 months.
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We like to call this the distiller's spirit because it is uncut,
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unfiltered, right from the cask. And at 7 years and
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2 to 3 months, it is really the pinnacle of the founder's
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taste vision. So I like to think about tasting in 2
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ways. Most people like to tell you, do you get the caramel and the vanilla
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and the oak? Those are really specific to you. Those are called character notes.
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They're based on your background, your experiences, who's trained you how to taste and
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how you associate specific characters with flavors. So if I
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say caramel, I might be thinking of a very sweet state fair candy from
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the US. Highly sweet. You might be thinking of a Werther's Original
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from your grandma's closet. Might not— I'm not
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sure if you guys have that. Yeah, yeah, we have it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Now you know. I thought that was a global candy. Yeah, definitely. But they're different
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caramel flavor profiles, right? Yeah. So we had to think about essence within my blending
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team. So think about when you go to smell the spirit, Does it have intensity
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and velocity when it comes out of the glass? So smell it. Do you really
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have to bury your nose in to get it, or does it jump out to
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you quite naturally? And then as you're starting to smell it, does it have complexity
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and depth, layers of flavor, or is it quite singular in that?
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So as you go to taste, this is a cask strength. So take a little
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taste and then take a little breath after that.
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It's beautiful and smooth. Let your mouth kind of get used to the alcohol
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content. Our cask strength is generally around 54 to 57% alcohol by
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volume. If it feels a little warm, that's what we call the Kentucky hug.
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But think about that flavor and does it match what's in the aroma?
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So does the flavor have the same characteristics that were normal or is it disaggregated?
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And we'll talk about that as we get to some of the other samples.
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How does it coat your tongue? Does it creamy and have viscosity and
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layers, or is it somewhat kind of slick and does it go
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right off of your palate? And then does it hold that intensity of flavor for
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a long period of time on the finish? And is it something we all have
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one common response is, do I like this or not? Yeah. So that's what we
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think of as the essence of the spirit. But of course,
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in any American whiskey and in bourbon particularly, you're going to get caramel,
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you're going to get vanilla, and you're going to get oak. Then you're going to
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see that quite boldly expressed in this. But for us,
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quite uniquely, we have a bit of a cherry note. So think about a bright
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citrusy type of cherry. That's unique from our yeast strain. We have a proprietary yeast
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strain, and that is quite articulated in Cask Strength.
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Yeah. And then we are a
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wheated bourbon. Most of the category is made with rye.
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Um, wheated bourbons are a very small portion of the overall bourbon category.
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And what wheat brings is it brings a viscosity. We call it a creaminess.
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There's that weight on your tongue and that finish that you
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get is a spice note. And you commonly hear people talk about spice with bourbon,
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but they're talking about rye spice, which is black pepper,
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clove, and fresh-cut grass. That's the type of spice note that rye
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really brings for you. Wheat brings a different type of spice. Think about
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your holiday baking spices, your cinnamons, your nutmegs, those warm
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holiday spices. And that's what they— yeah, like Christmas in a glass.
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That's really what you feel in the back palate. So you really see that expressed,
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especially on the finish. Yeah, it's kind of buttery almost the way that it's kind
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of— does Maker's Mark use any rye, do they? No, no rye. So we were
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70% corn, 16% soft red winter wheat, and 14%
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malted barley. So that inclusion of wheat is quite unique,
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but also the high percentage of malted barley is also
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quite unique at 14%. Most bourbon distillers use
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5% or less malted barley. Yeah, amazing. And it's
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funny, the velocity is a term that I've only recently learned about because that thing
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of like, often I nose a bourbon and I'm really digging deep to
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try to get something out of it. Or sometimes it's really whacking you in the
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face as you kind of put your nose in the glass. But you're right,
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the velocity just seems to meet you right in the right place with this.
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It's like I'm getting characteristics out of it now, but I'm not— it's not whacking
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me and I'm not having to dig for it. So, yeah, that's lovely. Yeah,
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beautiful. And so in the history of Maker's, was it ever
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kind of bottled at a cask strength kind of before, or was it always kind
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of brought down to about 90 proof? So from 1953 all the way through 2010,
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we only made one product, and that was Maker's Mark Classic at 45% alcohol by
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volume. So the original founder's taste vision was Maker's Mark Classic.
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It was meant to be warm, pleasant, inviting,
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something that you didn't have to work to like,
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something that you— it was just very easy for you to enjoy.
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And while Bill Samuels Sr. designed all the aspects
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of the liquid, Margie Samuels designed all the aspects of the package,
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from our signature Wedrax drip to the shape of the bottle to
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even The smallest nuances, like this little kind of incision in the neck
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here, which makes a beautiful glug, glug, glug sound.
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No way. Is that— that's quite unique to Maker's Mark. So she
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really thought through all of the touchpoints from our name, our symbology.
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So we like to think of it as something that has substance and style,
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something that looks good and something that tastes even better.
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As the bourbon category continued to expand and really explode,
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2010 onward, we did start to open up with new innovations.
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But our first innovation was actually Maker's Mark 46, where we took cask
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strength Maker's Mark, we took 10 seared virgin French
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oak staves, and we submerged it in that cask strength Maker's Mark
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for 9 weeks at a cool temperature, 10 degrees Celsius or less,
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for 9 weeks. And that really amplified the caramel and
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the spice notes. And we had a little bit more alcohol content to it.
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I know it's called Maker's Mark 46, but it's actually 47. Percent alcohol by
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volume. There's another fun story for another podcast on that one.
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Um, but that after Maker's Mark 46
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came out, that's when we started to offer cask strength as well to our customers
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and consumers. That's incredible, and we love it.
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Yeah, yeah, amazing. All right, great. So we'll move along. What's, what's in our next
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glass along here, Blake? So as I mentioned, our founder's taste vision is to
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make products that are warm, that are inviting, that are pleasant, something you don't have
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to work to like. One thing that occurs with American whiskey is
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we use new casks. We use new virgin charred
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casks. So those casks are extremely active, and that is
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quite unique within the global whiskey category because Canadian whiskey,
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Scotch whiskey, Japanese whiskey, they can all leverage used
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casks, meaning they can have been used before one time,
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2 times, even 3 times, and they typically have a very different climate
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than we have. Here in the States, our traditional
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warehouses can go from between 0 to 40 degrees
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Celsius. So it can be a very wide range
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of temperatures. Now, Scotland, for instance, 10 degrees
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Celsius or less. Yeah, you're right. I mean, mostly. So it's, it's a very narrow
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band of temperatures. So aging occurs very differently due to their cask selection
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and due to their climate. So for us,
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In American whiskey, age is not an indicator of quality.
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I'll say that twice because people love to think it's older,
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it must be better. And I like to think about it like I think of
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people. You probably know some people that are quite old but that
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are quite immature. And in American whiskey,
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it actually becomes immature in the sense that it becomes quite singular.
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The oak starts to take over at a certain point in time,
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and it's different for each distillery based on their mash bill and their entry proof
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and how they manage their inventory.
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But older does not mean better, because what happens is
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in American whiskey, it smells amazing. You'll, you'll smell that glass. And, you know,
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I mentioned smell it and think about the complexity and the layers.
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It's absolutely gorgeous. Yeah. But then when you taste it,
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it's absolutely horrible. It is disaggregated.
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The flavor does not match what's in the aroma. It's super
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singular, and that means it's super simple. And that singularity is
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oak, and that oak goes very tannic and very dry and bitter and astringent.
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And a lot of people have, I would say, acclimated themselves to understand
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that that flavor profile in American whiskey is what an older
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American whiskey is supposed to taste like. And we fundamentally think that they're wrong.
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And so this is a debatable point. This is my personal opinion, our personal opinion
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as a brand house, because it's our house style to make things that people don't
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have to work to like. And astringency and bitterness is an acquired taste,
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just like coffee. Most people, when they drink coffee— I drink black
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coffee, but when I started drinking coffee, I probably had a lot of creamer in
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there, and I kind of worked myself down from that. I acclimated
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to that bitter flavor profile. And so what I want you to taste
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is an 11.5-year-old Maker's Mark, fully aged
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in a traditional warehouse at cask strength. Okay. And I
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want you to think about those principles we talked about: aroma, flavor,
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do things match, and think about that back end and that finish.
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All right. It hits you a lot harder. The velocity?
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Well, the, just the nosing it, I'm just like, compared to that one.
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Yeah. Velocity is going to be your new favorite word, Dave. Wow.
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So it's an interesting experience, right? That's an interesting experience.
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So you wouldn't say— I don't not like it. I knew you were
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going to say that. I knew you were going to say that, Dave, because that's
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the common reaction we get. Because I don't think we make a bad whiskey here,
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and I'm not saying that this is bad whiskey. Yeah, it's just not to our
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house style, because on that back end, what do you start to— Yeah, there's a
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tannin. It's the bitterness. Yeah, that bite afterwards, like the aftertaste
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that isn't particularly great. And the tingly tongue tannin thing that happens
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a bit with that kind of the bite. Absolutely, it's very drying, like I feel
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like I wish I had a glass of water, like I kind of want to
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take a sip and to get it out of my mouth. This is such an
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educating conversation. I've had whiskies like this before, yeah, and I didn't think
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that that was wrong, and I suppose it's not necessarily wrong, it's just a different
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choice. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like, yeah, the nose really
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hits you in the face, and then when you have it, it's, yeah, it's quite
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confronting. Yeah. So, I mean, it's got a lot of great notes into it.
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It does have a lot of the velocity. It does have a lot of intensity.
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It does have some of the notes that we like. It's got the caramels and
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the vanillas more on the burnt side, but quite bold. But it
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is disaggregated from it as you actually go to taste it.
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The aroma doesn't match. Yeah. Completely different.
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Very oak-driven. And on the back end, you get that bitterness. And if
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you want to wash something out of your mouth, like you want to get it
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out of your mouth, it generally means that subconsciously you don't like it. Like,
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I want to get this out of my mouth. I want to sit something else
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behind it to remove the flavor that is currently in. And that's against our
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founder's guidelines. The finish is kind of funny as well, because it's all around the
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different parts of my mouth is that dryness, I think. Yeah, I'm getting dry right
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at the back. It's like you're saying, I feel like now you need the glass
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of water. I have to taste all my whiskies again now that I know.
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I'm going to have a very busy year. It's not a wrong choice. It's just
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a choice. It's our house style. It's our way of thinking about whisky. Yeah,
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that's amazing. And so people who like that oakiness,
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it's that they really like older whiskies.
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The oakiness is obviously a flavor they've either trained themselves or come to like.
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Correct. There you go. I'll let you ask the question now, Dave. Sorry. Well,
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I was going to ask you about, because I know, so Maker's kind
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of infamously the last kind of team that still hand rotates barrels.
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So what in this case, because this barrel's done something a bit strange compared to
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the other barrels. Yeah. What's happened with this barrel? Started for the first few years
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at the top of the rickhouse and then got rotated down, and then what happened?
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So we're actually famous for saying age to taste, and that's why I tried to
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give context of why you shouldn't think of age as the only driver of
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quality. So for us, we have a very low entry proof, and so we
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enter in at 110 proof or 55% alcohol by volume. Sorry, I am
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American, so I like to use confusing units of measure. We would like
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to do anything other than use the metric system. So we
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enter in at a low entry proof compared to the rest of
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the industry. That gives us a sweeter profile. We only use barrels that
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are ricks, so stored on their side so the liquid touches all parts of the
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barrel. Many distilleries all around the world are more commonly
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switching to palletized barrels. It's cheaper and easier and more efficient to build.
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However, you miss contact with parts of the barrels. You might not get
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that full spectrum of flavors from the oak. We also hand rotate our
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barrels for consistency within those warehouses, and we age
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for between 6 and 8 years, really targeting right around that 7-year
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target is really where we think the flavor is just absolutely amazing.
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So that being said, we took fully matured Maker's
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Mark cask strength, those barrels, and we rotated them into
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our limestone cellar. So in 2010, I mentioned that
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we created our first innovation, which was Maker's Mark 46. And Maker's Mark 46 relies
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on cool temperature to make it. We were only able to make Maker's Mark 46
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in the wintertime because that's when it's cool here in Kentucky.
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The volume of that started to grow. We need to be able to make it
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year round. So we did the most American thing that we could think of when
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we dynamited the side of the hill to create the first bourbon
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whiskey cellar in the US. That was in 2016.
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And we said, this is such a unique environment.
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What would happen we took our fully matured barrels and we put them in that
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cellar, and that created Maker's Mark Cellar Aged.
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And Maker's Mark Cellar Aged is a 2025
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release. This will be hitting in Australia this coming
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November, and this features some of the oldest marks coming
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out of our distillery. So it is a blend of 11,
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13, and 14-year-old whiskey. So 74% of
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an 11-year, 10% of a 13-year, and 16%
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of a 14-year. That's amazing. And really, really unique.
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And the flavor vision for this is to create a version of Maker's
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Mark that is dark, rich, and complex,
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but that doesn't have bitterness. Yeah. And that cellar,
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what it technically does for you is the temperature is held
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much like it would be in Scotland, 10 degrees Celsius or less.
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Year-round. So it slows down those additive mechanisms that
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come from the cask, additive in terms of the tannic additive.
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But you're still going to get oxidative reactions that are going to occur.
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So oxidation is a process in which flavors are destroyed and
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new flavors are created. So think of it as some of your esters,
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those fruity notes, are going to transform into a different type of fruity note.
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You're going to see some caramelization reactions occur. So those caramel notes,
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you're going to get layers and depth, that richness is really
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going to develop, and you're going to get some mellowing of the spirit. So it's
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going to have a very different flavor profile. So that's what I'd like us to
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taste now. This is also at cask strength,
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56.45% alcohol by volume.
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I'm excited to taste this. Wow, it noses so much differently.
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Well, it doesn't hit you in the face, as I say, with that alcohol kind
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of— yeah, as this one did. And the fruitiness is really,
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at least for me, it's really prevalent on the nose. Yeah.
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To me, the fruitiness really pops out. So it's an interesting,
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bright, citrusy type of cherry that is expressed in cask
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strength. But you can see where the process of oxidation
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has really changed it here. It's more of like a dark cordial type of cherry
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that's really being expressed. Yeah, it's really fruity.
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Like a plum, almost, or a dark stone fruit kind of thing.
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Yeah, like a fig. Yeah, great. Yeah, that is so fun.
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And so by putting, by having it in a cellar for the, is it,
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is, does it spend its whole life in the cellar? It starts as Maker's from
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a normal retail? It starts as cask strength Maker's Mark, so it spends the first
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half of its life, so between 6 and 8 years in a traditional warehouse,
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and then it rotates for the remainder of its life into the cellar. Great.
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Amazing. And so then It, and I suppose like what you had
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always done with Maker's, it's tasting it and seeing when it's ready to go.
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That's correct. And each year we change the blend of this, so it will
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always be between 11 and 14 years of blends that go in. But we want
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to show what the cellaring technique can actually mean for flavor. So '23 was different
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from '24, which is different from '25, and that's on purpose because
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we're trying to show all the flavors that exist in cask strength Maker's Mark,
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but we're really pulling them and exaggerating them in unique and different ways each year.
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Amazing. Amazing. And then how does the blending process go
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in terms of trying to establish what percentage of each of the different ages you
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want to, want to use? How does that— well, there's, there's a very small blending
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group, so it's myself, our lead blender, Beth Butner, and we have one other person
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on our team, Ryan, and we all get together and we fight for about
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2 weeks. What a great fight. I want to be part of that fight.
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It's actually quite, quite a fun discussion where the,
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the best idea wins. Where we'll all create a couple of different
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blends, then we'll blind them and we'll go through and taste them.
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And whiskey does have a way of developing as the casks marry together. So we'll
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taste them originally and then we'll taste them after a week and then we'll taste
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them after 2 weeks, taste them after 3 weeks. And then we say, okay,
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this is going to be the final spirit. So that's, that's how we
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pick. I must say that Beth Buckner has won the past 3 years.
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It's a one-sided fight. Unfortunately, she's very good.
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How long between when you pick the end one and that? Do you retaste it
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a couple of days later before you come to the final decision? Yeah. And then
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we also bring in Rob Samuels, who's our managing director and grandson of the
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founders, and he also has a say. Make sure they go ahead. All right,
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one last question before we're going to wrap up, because we've already used so much
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of your time already, Blake. But how old have you tasted
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in terms of what the cellar can do? Because I'm curious about when you
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go through this process, There must be a cap to when you start to edge
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towards this tannic overaging that must happen at some point. But how
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old have you got in the cellar? What have you tasted? Is there something down
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the track that might be older still? Is there people who are interested in those
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high age statements, whether they're right or wrong?
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How long can this process go? Well, that's a great question. This does actually feature
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the oldest whiskies that we currently have in the distillery. Now, we do
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still have some that are still aging, Because we're still learning. You guys are going
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on the learning process with us. And we think
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that with the current process that we're doing, taking between 6 and
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8 years and rotating to the cellar, around 15 to 17 years before we'll
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start to see that inflection point where we start to dip down and we get
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too much of the oak and tannin. But we haven't found the inflection point yet.
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That doesn't mean it's not there. We just haven't found it yet. But this
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is the oldest of the whiskies that we have within the distillery. So we're really
21:52
excited to showcase that this year. That's so exciting, and we're so grateful that you
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shared it with us today. So amazing. Yeah, thank you very much, and cheers.
21:59
Absolutely. Cheers, Blake. Thanks for coming on.
22:05
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