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Hillrock Estate Solera Aged Bourbon

The Hillrock Estate Distillery, located in the Hudson Valley, NY, take their name quite seriously. Established on a stunning--well, estate --complete with a mansion built in 1806, Hillrock describe themselves as a "field to glass" distillery; in addition to growing their own heritage barley, they floor malt, smoke, and kiln it in house. The distillery is staffed by a team of industry veterans including Master Distiller Dave Pickerell, of Maker's Mark and Whistle Pig fame. In addition to the painstaking attention paid to their barley, Hillrock also use a solera aging technique for their Bourbon. You can read more about that process here , but it is a complex and difficult technique which allows the average age of the spirit produced to grow continuously over time via fractional blending; the longer a solera is in place, the older and more complex the bottled spirit becomes. Presumably, this process is somehow made compatible with the legal requirement that Bourbon be aged ...