When it comes to whiskey, Texas is on a roll. Distilleries like Waco’s Balcones and Denison’s Ironroot Republic are winning acclaim at spirits competitions throughout the country, and Texas is suddenly making a grab for Kentucky’s flask of whiskey paradise glory, saying: We’ll have some of that, please.
One of several new spirits or liqueurs finding their way onto local shelves is Grayson Texas Blended Bourbon, the forthcoming project from three Texas whiskey aficionados.
It’s “a whiskey that captures that boldness of Texas while paying homage to the Lone Star State,” they say. In other words, it’s very Texas. Grayson also has the distinction of being Texas’ first Black-owned whiskey brand: Among its three founders is former Major League Baseball player Vernon Wells.
Wells, who grew up in Arlington and played mostly for the Angels and Blue Jays, had sampled his share of fine wines, whiskies and cognacs throughout his career, and he’d developed an appreciation for “the work that goes into every bottle,” he says.
He’d already jumped into the wine world with business partner Brandon Davis, and the two briefly considered making a brandy. But Wells, who now lives in Colleyville, had begun to note the quality whiskies starting to trickle out of Texas. There, he thought, was a home-run investment, and the moment to swing was now.
“There’s a timing for everything,” Wells says. “And this was the perfect time to jump in and learn and grow.”
Not that he knew anything about making a bourbon. But it was around that time that he and Davis were introduced to Nico Martini, a local whiskey fan and booze businessman working on a book about the Texas boom. Already in touch with distillers throughout the state, Martini pitched the idea of crafting a blended spirit drawn from the barrels from some of Texas’ best producers.
“I knew that would be the best-case scenario,” Martini says. “Let’s just work with everybody.”
Martini reached out to brothers Robert and Jonathan Likarish of Ironroot Republic Distillery in Denison, which is now producing some of Texas’ most acclaimed whiskeys since launching in 2014, to see what they thought of the idea.
As it turned out, Jonathan was so into it that he basically took over the project’s blending duties.
“That’s every distiller’s dream, to play with other people’s bottles,” he said recently at Grayson’s launch party in downtown Dallas.
Once the group had a sit-down to hash out the flavor profile they were aiming for, “Jonathan took off in his mad-scientist way and brought back a bunch of samples” from barrel stashes developing at various Texas distilleries, Martini says.
The team narrowed it down to a handful of blends they liked, and then Likarish did some tweaking to zero in on what would become Grayson — a blend of whiskeys from Ironroot, Balcones and Forney’s Five Points Distillery, which produces Lone Elm whiskey. The result is a powerful, 119-proof whiskey that comes on innocently sweet before settling in with pleasant campfire warmth.
For Martini, the blend’s “secret ingredient” is the contribution from Five Points, whose straight wheat whiskeys make it “probably the most underrated distillery in the state of Texas,” he says. “The stuff they’re doing is fantastic. They were a vital part of this whole thing.”
Grayson is the first of what the team says will be a series of Texas-based blends. “When batch No. 2 comes out, it will be something totally different,” Martini says. “We want to make a blended malt, a blended rye, maybe even a blended bou-rye. I just like the idea of blending something together to make something unique.”
Grayson’s promotional materials describe the aroma as featuring hints of raisin and barrel-aged maple syrup, along with more quirky references like jalapeño jelly and the inside of new cowboy boots. (While not listed on the label, there’s clearly some Texas bravado in this blend.)
The taste is said to reflect syrupy waffle notes followed by spiced cider, brown butter and fennel, though if your main impression is baked apple, that’s fine, too. It’s a winner. Suggested retail price is $59.99.
“The thing I love most about it is that when I taste it, all I can taste is Texas,” Martini says. “It’s a high-proof, comforting bourbon. This is our way of showing the world what an amalgamation of the best whiskeys in Texas can be.”
Another new Texas whiskey on local store shelves is TX Bottled-in-Bond straight bourbon, a single-barrel expression that hit shelves last year from Fort Worth’s Firestone & Robertson. It’s the first Texas bourbon to bear the Bottled-in-Bond label, which means it meets the legal requirements set out in the U.S. Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897.
To be called Bottled-in-Bond, a spirit must be the American-made product of a single distillation season by one distiller at a single distillery, aged a minimum of four years and bottled at exactly 100 proof.
TX Bottled-in-Bond, which has a suggested retail price of $49.99, veers toward sweet with a nice butterscotch finish.
Coincidentally, the Grayson partners had also reached out to Firestone & Robertson as they began exploring their project; however, the Fort Worth distillery was preoccupied with the process of being acquired by the USA arm of global spirits giant Pernod Ricard, so you could say it worked out well for everyone.
Finally, another recent Texas arrival worth noting is Abasolo’s Nixta corn liqueur, billed as the world’s first and only Mexican sweet corn liqueur, or licor de elote. While not a whiskey, Nixta is crafted from one — Abasolo’s Mexican corn whisky, made wholly from Mexican corn in high terrain northwest of Mexico City using a millennia-old process called nixtamalization, also used to make masa.
To make Nixta, ancestral cacahuazintle corn is harvested early in its sweet, tender state, then roasted; an equal amount is macerated in unaged Abasolo whisky and mixed with a blend of corn, water and an unrefined Latin American cane sugar called piloncillo.
“Abasolo is the base,” says brand ambassador Cedar Sandoval. “That’s poured over the elote and it sits for about three months, and the corn starts to disintegrate and flavors the spirit.”
The liquid is then moved to a pot still and simmered over low heat to concentrate the flavors. The result is something like an adult version of the milk from a bowl of Corn Pops, with notes of roasted corn, caramel and vanilla.
Meanwhile, the niftiest thing about Nixta might be the bottle itself, which cleverly evokes an ear of corn. Sandoval says Nixta can be subbed in place of other sweet liqueurs like Grand Marnier, Cointreau or Drambuie. “It’s perfect for margaritas,” he said. “Or you can add it to coffee or cook with it — add a little bit of Nixta and it changes everything.”
