The Complete Guide to Ben Holladay Bourbon

What is real Missouri Bourbon?

By Brian Donnelly

October 16, 2023

Brief History

The Holladay Distillery is probably the oldest distillery you have never heard of. Located in Weston, Missouri, just 45 minutes north of Kansas City by car, it is the oldest distillery west of the Mississippi River. Benjamin Holladay and his brother David purchased the land in 1849 after they stopped to water their horses at the sight of some natural limestone springs first charted by Lewis and Clark in 1804. Ben Holladay was a Kentucky native, and Transportation Tycoon nicknamed the "Stagecoach King" for creating the Overland Express stagecoach lines that were sold to Wells Fargo. Originally called the Blue Springs Distillery, Ben and his brother distilled their first batch of whiskey in 1856, and it sold for 35 cents per gallon. After the death of Ben and David Holladay, the distillery remained in the family through the end of the 1800s.

The Holladay Distillery evolved as the decades passed, changing ownership and names several times before becoming McCormick Distilling Company in 1942. The distillery was almost destroyed by a fire in 1957, eventually becoming recognized on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. The company stopped bourbon production in 1985 to focus on producing value spirits. After a group of private investors acquired the McCormick Distilling Company, the company prioritized the development of a portfolio of more premium brands, which paved the way for innovative new brand concepts. In 2015, the distillery underwent a $10 million renovation of the original stillhouse. It began distilling bourbon on-site for the first time in 30 years, resurrecting the Holladay Distillery name in honor of the founders.

This short backstory is certainly not a comprehensive history of Ben Holladay, the distillery, or the McCormick Distilling Company. An employee of the brand succinctly put it this way, "This isn't the story of our great-great-grandfather had a distillery and now we’re revitalizing it. We have always been there; we stopped making bourbon for 30 years, but now we're back."

The Holladay Distillery distills and ages all their bourbon and has never sourced any of their products. The company had the unique luxury of investing in six years' worth of aging bourbon without any return. Thanks to the rest of the McCormick portfolio, they could afford to make bourbon the right way from the very start.

Real Missouri Bourbon

The labels for both expressions of Holladay bourbon read "Missouri Straight Bourbon Whiskey." You may be asking yourself if that means anything legally. Turns out it does.

According to House Bill 266, signed on Thursday, July 11, 2019, any whiskey labeled as Missouri bourbon must not only meet the federal standards for bourbon but also be mashed, fermented, distilled, aged, and bottled in the state; aged in oak barrels manufactured in the state; and - beginning January 1, 2020 - made with corn exclusively grown in the state. The law went into effect on August 28, 2019.

As a real Missouri bourbon, the Holladay distillery sources their Missouri corn from within 20 miles of the property, and the same farmer collects the spent grain to use as cattle feed, creating a closed loop. The distillery sources its barrels from Independent Stave in Lebanon, Missouri. These barrels are made from new Missouri charred white oak with a # 3 char.

Kentucky-Style Bourbon in Missouri

Skeptics could be told that the Holladay Distillery can make Kentucky-style bourbon in Missouri because of three significant factors: water, warehouses, and weather. The Holladay brothers purchased the land in 1849 at the sight of some natural limestone springs first charted by Lewis and Clark in 1804. Still, it took them seven years to convert it into a fully operating distillery. They dug out a cistern from the seven limestone springs, 15 feet wide and 35 feet deep, holding 45,000 gallons of natural limestone filtered spring water. Located right next to the stillhouse, it takes about 3,000 gallons of water to cook a batch of bourbon. The next day, the water level returns to where it was. Putting a dollar amount on this kind of natural resource is impossible.

The property has three "ironclad" rickhouses, also called rackhouses, that date back to the early 1900s. The first building, built in 1904, was converted into office space, leaving the remaining two rickhouses active to age bourbon barrels. One building is six stories tall and holds 10,000 barrels; the second is seven stories tall and holds 12,000 barrels.

These buildings are not climate-controlled. They are called ironclad rickhouses because they're built from wood and metal. This style of aging warehouse is not found outside of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana, making the Holladay property unique for Missouri. At the beginning of the hot season in Spring, they open up the windows of the rickhouses to allow the aging barrels to "breathe." In the fall, they close the windows for the winter. The weather in this part of Missouri is very similar to Kentucky and Tennessee, except it pushes the extremes of summer and winter. The summer can reach 110°F (43°C), and winter can go -20°F (-29°C). In the seven-story rickhouse, it is not uncommon for there to be a 30-degree temperature difference between the bottom and top floors. There is also a cave on site that predates the distillery. Previously used to cure and preserve meat when the property was a slaughterhouse, Ben Holladay used the cave as the original location for storing whiskey barrels. The distillery recently had the cave federally bonded, which means they can legally age barrels there. They use the spot to play around with experimental barrels, wood toasting, wine barrel finishing, and double oaking.

Production

The distillery uses a dual cooker system, so the corn cooks separately from the small grains (rye, wheat, and malted barley). This method is historically accurate to how Ben Holladay would have made whiskey in 1856. The current stillhouse was originally a slaughterhouse dating back to 1839, so it predates the founding of the distillery by the Holladay brothers by seventeen years. The distillery initially used a still from Maker's Mark until the late 1980s. When the company decided to begin distilling bourbon again, they asked Vendome Copper & Brass Works in Louisville, Kentucky, to come to Weston, Missouri, inspect the still, and see if it could revitalized. A brand employee jokingly told me, "I guess they are good salesmen too because they convinced us that we needed to purchase a new still, and that's exactly what we did." There was one minor complication. Since the site was recognized on the National Register of Historic Places, they could not alter the four walls of the stillhouse, which meant they had to get creative on how to install the new 50-foot tall, 18-inch wide Vendome column still. They removed a portion of the ceiling in the stillhouse, used one crane inside it to stabilize everything, and finally used a second crane outside to drop in the new still.

Holladay Bourbon, like most Kentucky bourbons, uses a sour mash technique. Sour Mashing, sometimes referred to as backset, takes some of the residue from the first distillation run and places it back in the fermenter for use in the next round of fermentation. The backset is very acidic and essential in fermentation because local water can have a high alkaline content, which would otherwise interfere with the yeast. The sour mashing process assists in creating a consistent product from one batch to another. The fermented mash, also called wash, wart, or distiller's beer, is distilled in that Vendome column to 120 proof (60 % ABV), then run through a double to a off-the-still proof strength of 130 (65 % ABV). Finally, that new-make spirit, also called white dog, is cut with water to a barrel-entry proof of 118 (59 % ABV) and fills 14 barrels (53 gallons). The brand produces 14 barrels a day, six days a week.

The different micro-climates in each rickhouse are essential because they give the distillery a wide array of proofs and flavor profiles when batching or combining different barrels for bottling. The distillery does not rotate barrels, meaning each batch release will have a further mingling of barrels. An employee of the brand told me that they have seen proofs as low as 108 (54 % ABV) on the first floor and up to 127 (63.5 % ABV) on the seventh floor. The distillery has a bottling batch size, or the amount of barrels combined for one batch for bottling is around 48-52. The distillery labels both expressions as "Small Batch," which holds no legal significance—the distillery releases around four batches a year.

The brand is highly transparent. Consumers can find a blending chart on the side of the bottle to identify the percentage of barrels sourced from what floors in which warehouse. For example, the bottle of Ben Holladay I have on my desk was bottled on January 27, 2023, aged in Warehouse C, and the barrel batching source looks like this: Floor 7 (0 %), 6 (0 %), 5 (11 %), 4 (40 %), 3 (31 %), 2 (18 %), 1 (0 %). For comparison, the bottle of Soft Red Wheat I have was bottled in August 2023 and sourced 100 % from the fourth floor of Warehouse C. You can find all the information behind each batch at their Distillers Journal.

The Master Distillery, Kyle Merklein, has a target flavor portfolio or house style that he tries to achieve with each batch. Since each barrel ages differently, the location of barrels used will change from batch to batch. I am sure consumers have started collecting different batches to keep or compare their favorite releases. The distillery can only blend barrels for a six-month distillation period to be considered bottled-in-bond. Here's a quick refresher about what it means to be labeled bottled-in-bond. The Ben Holladay and Soft Red Wheat are bottled-in-bond bourbons. Under the United States Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, this means each product must be aged in a federally bonded warehouse for a minimum of four years, produced in one distillation season (January to June or July to December) from one distillery, and bottled at 100 proof (50 % ABV). Most customers associate bottled-in-bond with four-year-old whiskey, but you will never find a release from the Holladay Distillery younger than six-years-old. The same can be said for the bottling proof. There will never be a product bottled under 100 proof (50 % ABV).

The brand's second expression, Soft Red Wheat, has no historical significance like the Ben Holladay expression. The brand has a wheated bourbon because Mick Harris, President of McCormick Distilling, is a massive fan of wheated bourbon, also known as wheaters, and asked Master Distiller Kyle Merklein to produce one. This decision was a no-brainer, especially considering the popularity of other wheated bourbons, such as Maker's Mark, Weller, and Pappy Van Winkle. The distillery began producing the Soft Red Wheat expression one calendar year after Ben Hollday, which means they released this expression a year after the Ben Holladay expression hit the market. (March 2023). Currently, there is the same level of production for both expressions. An employee of the brand told me they would let the market decide which expression to produce more. One week, they distill Ben Holladay; the next week, they distill Soft Red Wheat. At this point, barrels of both expressions are fully incorporated into each floor for the most part, so there is more uniformity. They hold back some barrels for their barrel-proof and single-barrel offerings. The barrel-proof versions of Ben Holladay and Soft Red Wheat, called Rickhouse Proof, and the single barrel expression, called One Barrel Bourbon, are distillery-exclusive at the time of writing (October 2023). The Ben Holladay One Barrel Bourbon won double gold at the 2023 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

Taking their cues from the wine industry, the brand released their bourbons with screw tops, compared to the industry standard half cork, or synthetic half cork, closure. The brand hopes this closure will eliminate the failure sometimes associated with traditional closures that can lead to oxidation. You could consider the Ben Holladay brand the New Zealand of the bourbon industry because the country of New Zealand is credited with spearheading the use of screwtops in the mainstream international wine market. The Holladay bottle caps are only a quarter turn, which should not stop anyone from quickly accessing their bourbon.

Holladay Soft Red Wheat, 6 Year-Old, Bottled-in-Bond, Missouri Straight Bourbon Whiskey

First released in 2023, Soft Red Wheat is the brand's second product and has no historical significance to the distillery. The company's president enjoys wheated bourbon, so he asked the Master Distillery to produce one about a year after he started distilling the flagship Ben Holladay bourbon. This expression is the same as Ben Holladay, except for the mash bill, which uses wheat instead of rye. The Soft Red Wheat expression mash bill is 73 % Missouri corn, 15 % wheat, and 12 % barley, uses estate limestone spring water, has a barrel-entry proof of 118 (59 % ABV), and is aged on-site in new # 3 charred Missouri white oak barrels for a minimum of 6 years. This product follows all the Bottled-in-Bond and Missouri bourbon laws and is non-chill filtered, bottled in small batches of 48-52 barrels at 100 proof (50 % ABV). The Holladay Soft Red Wheat won a gold medal at the 2023 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. 

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