Grain of Truth: Wheated Bourbon Blind

All of the selected bourbons are wheated and some are extremely sought after. Weller Special Reserve is a $30 90-proof bottle that I've seen on whiskeywallofshame for $200. Larceny Barrel Proof is a 115-125 proof flavor bomb that won Whisky Advocate's Whisky of the Year on its first release. Maker's Mark Keepers Release is a $75 wood-finished release of one of my favorite budget bottles Maker's Cask Strength. And Holladay Soft Red Wheat Rickhouse Proof is the bottle I keep reaching back for over and over again, my current favorite wheated bourbon by some margin.

Same mashbill category, very different proofs, very different prices, very different reputations. The question was simple: when the labels come off, does any of that matter?

Spoiler: yes but not as much as you'd think.

Full individual reviews on all the bottles here are in progress. This is just the blind.

The Setup

Quick calibration pour of 1792 Full Proof to get the palate oriented, randomly selected because its high proof but a totally average pour. Then to the four unlabeled glasses in front of me.

The lineup is Holladay Soft Red Wheat Rickhouse Proof at 121.5, Larceny Barrel Proof A125 at 125, Maker's Mark Keepers Release 2025 at 109.2, and Weller Special Reserve at 90. Going in, I already know the honest answer to whether a $30 90-proof bottle can run with three higher-proof wheaters in the $65 to $75 range. But its a good control for the blind.

The Nose

Sample 1 leads with candied cherries and vanilla. It's inviting right away, the kind of nose that pulls you in rather than making you work for it. There's real fruit presence here, not a faint suggestion of it.

Sample 2 is quiet. Nothing offensive, nothing particularly exciting. The nose is there but it's not doing much to sell itself.

Sample 3 opens with vanilla and bright oak. More fruit shows up on the palate than the nose suggests, leaning toward red tree fruit, apple-adjacent. I think some call this orchard fruit. Still working on the vocab. There's something familiar about it, a signature I feel like I've run into before.

Sample 4 might have the best nose of the four. Sweet earth, some complexity underneath. It makes a strong first impression.

First Pass on the Palate

Sample 1 - Excellent. Rich and velvety mouthfeel, great fruit flavor, and it's drinking noticeably soft. Soft enough I think it might be low proof Weller SR. There's a little bitter oak on the finish that takes it down a peg, but it's a minor complaint on an otherwise excellent glass. The dry finish actually makes me want another sip. Something like an herbal note underneath if you're looking for it.

Sample 2 - The toned-down version of Sample 1. Caramel apple, classic wheater profile, smooth and calm finish. It's genuinely pleasant. It's just the wrong glass to taste right after Sample 1. I revist after the other two and that first impression holds.

Sample 3 - Tracks the apple notes from Sample 2 but with more fruit character and that cinnamon from the nose following through. It's good DNA, but I'm going to say it's too bright for me. It drinks young. It has a clear identity, but unfortunately tannic and bitter.

Sample 4 - Comes at you with a sledgehammer. The nose promised complexity and the palate delivers it in every direction at once, vanilla and caramel colliding with charred oak, bitter chocolate, and a dry exit. Funky with some grain mid-palate to finish. The mouthfeel is thinner than the others. Closer to Sample 2 and it runs hot. Not a criticism of the whiskey exactly, just a lot to process in one sitting. The heat is honestly too much, hard to work past the grain too.

First Guess

Sample 1 - Holladay Soft Red Wheat. It's drinking soft enough that for a moment I wonder if it's the Weller, but the mouthfeel is too rich, too present. The Soft Red Wheat is the only one of the four that drinks this far below its proof while still giving you this much to work with. That combination is hard to fake.

Sample 2 - Weller Special Reserve. Low-key, low-proof, pleasant. It's doing what a 90-proof wheater does.

Sample 3 - Maker's Mark Keepers. There's a distinct signature here I recognize. The bright oak, the vanilla-forward entry, the red fruit. It's Maker's DNA coming through clearly.

Sample 4 - Larceny Barrel Proof. The heat, the grain funk, the directional chaos on the palate. That's a 125-proof barrel proof release doing exactly what barrel proof releases do when they're a little rough around the edges.

The Rankings

Closer than expected. That's the honest answer. Getting into the details:

In Fourth: Sample 2 - 6.0. Pleasant, drinkable, but outclassed. Nothing wrong with it. Just everything around it is doing more.

In Third: Sample 4 - 6.5. The complexity is real and so is the heat. The thin mouthfeel and the grain funk on the exit are doing it no favors in this company. A half step up from fourth to reward complexity, but most nights I'd reach for Sample 2 over this one. That pour brought the heat in a way that isn't always what you want.

In Second: Sample 3 - 7.0. More coherent than Sample 4, more interesting than Sample 2. The cinnamon and red fruit are doing good work and the oak gives it some backbone, but its really bright young oak and overpowers the wheat profile in a lot of ways.

In First: Sample 1 - 8.0. Clear winner and highly differentiated from the others. The fruit is clean, the mouthfeel is exceptional, and it's somehow drinking like a 90-proof pour out of a 120-proof bottle. I'm serious about thinking it could have been the Weller since I had it first in the tasting order. The minor bitter oak on the finish is the only thing keeping it from being a perfect glass.

The Reveal

It makes for a bit of a boring reveal to get them all right but I'll be honest, this one wasn't a particularly hard blind to crack having selected the bottles. These four wheaters couldn't be more different, and I'd tasted all of them in the days leading up to this session. The Soft Red Wheat has an identity that's hard to mistake. Larceny Barrel Proof is a funky flavor bomb that announces itself. And between the remaining two, one was clearly running at a fraction of the proof of the other.

The surprise, if there is one, is how the Weller showed up. A $30 90-proof bottle finishing fourth out of four is not exactly a shock, but it wasn't embarrassed here either. It was genuinely pleasant. The problem is the company it was keeping. In a different lineup, sitting next to some standard-proof bottles at similar price points, it might place higher. Context is brutal but I think it's earned the 6 I gave it putting it into my Very Good category.

The bigger story is Holladay. I thought I had the Weller in my hand for a moment because of how approachable it was drinking. That's the whole game with the Holladay Soft Red Wheat. The soft red wheat grain delivers a softness that the proof doesn't telegraph. It's 121.5 proof and it drinks like it has nothing to prove. The mouthfeel is in a different category from the other three. I think the biggest thing working in its favor is that all the flavors are working together. Especially having it next to the Larceny which pulls in a lot of opposite directions, the SRW has a solid coherent profile that makes it easy to see past the proof.

Maker's Keepers finishing second does something to the neck pour impression I had going in. I came away from that first pour skeptical that the stave finishing was doing anything useful. Blind, without the label, it held up well enough for second place. Whether that changes my overall assessment on the full review is something I'm still sitting with. Probably not by much. But it's worth noting. That being said having a $75 bottle that really only hinders one of my favorite wheated budget bottles ($40 for Maker's Cask strength) I can't really recommend the bottle. The stave finish gets in the way of the pleasant wheat profile base and for a $35 premium? Going to have to pass. Or get the Soft Red Wheat for the same $75.

On Larceny: I've liked earlier batches of this more than A125. I don't have any on hand to compare against, but I know I liked my first bottle a lot more than this one. I'm going to say previous batches may have been older or just more selected for being able to tame that grain funk. At $65 the value case is good but for my money I would again recommend the Cask Strength Maker's unless you are trying to make a foray into complex high proof on a budget. Even then, maybe look for another batch. On drinkability though? Just pay the extra $10 for SRW.

The Holladay Soft Red Wheat is still my favorite wheated bourbon. A blind tasting with three genuine competitors just confirmed it. At $75, it's not cheap. But at $75 for a score in the 8-plus range, it's not expensive either. It's just good.

Buy it if you can find it. That last part may be the harder problem. I'm not sure this bottle sees wide distribution like the bottled in bond version.