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The Whiskey Thief story started in 2010 when friends met up for some Bourbon drinks. The choice on offer at the North London bar was extensive, over 60 Bourbons to choose from. However, pretty much every brand on the back-bar was owned and produced by a global conglomerate, and was packaged in a remarkably similar fashion… the bottles were similar, the brand was named after a person, a place or an animal and the label designs were all about history and heritage.
What if Joe Public wants something that is different?
Authentic to its core, Whiskey Thief is all about challenging convention and offering something different. From the name, the label, the bottle and the liquid, everything has been developed over several years by its independent team of UK-based creators to challenge convention and offer something refreshingly different and with a modern twist.
Over 90% of the world’s American Whiskey comes from 10 distilleries, all of which are located in the southern central states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Indiana. The primary reasons for this are climate, water and expertise.
When we selected our distillery production partner it was critical that they had all three attributes and more. We needed their patience to work with us through the experiments and create a process to replicate the results for a consistently high quality Bourbon.
Well that’s when our friends at the award-winning MGP Distillery in Lawrenceberg, Indiana really came into their own. With over 150 years of distilling expertise, a plentiful supply of the best quality grains and a perfect spot for our barrels in their warehouses they became part of the Whiskey Thief story.
We believe their ability as a distilling partner to understand what we wanted to achieve and help us deliver it has been a key reason why they were recognized as Malt Advocate’s ‘2015 World Distiller of the Year’.
Ageing of Whiskey is about harmony between the grains and wood, balancing the alcohol bite and creating the right intensity of texture, flavour and colour. In our humble opinion, it typically takes mother nature 6 to 10 years to work her magic in the 53 gallon barrel But as we say “life’s too short to wait for the good things so we made the clock tick a little faster when we created Whiskey Thief”.
The secrets behind our innovative accelerated maturation method for Whiskey Thief must remain elusively masked in mystery. What we can say is that we have developed an entirely natural method to increase the dynamic interaction between the Bourbon liquid and the oak. It took the creators over two years and dozens of experiments to achieve the final taste profile…
Delicious Bourbon, balanced on the nose, smooth and rounded in taste. Even the colour is richer and deeper.
A high quality distillate requires top notch ingredients and careful handling through the milling, cooking, fermentation and distilling process. Whiskey Thief uses a unique combination of two grain recipes to achieve a balanced, complex flavour.
The backbone of both grain recipes is distillers #1 grade corn, which is a defining factor of any Bourbon and drives the initial sweetness on the palate. The recipes then use different proportions of other grains to impart pleasant spice and raisined fruit flavours.