Seventeen Twelve Bourbon Puts North Carolina On Bourbon Map

With the huge rush to market in the last year or three of craft whiskey across the country, it has become something of a daily routine to search for new bottlings emerging from different states. We recently took note, for example, of a young bourbon surfacing out of North Carolina. Said to be that state’s first “made from local grains” bourbon since Prohibition, we introduce you to Seventeen Twelve Bourbon.

Seventeen Twelve Bourbon is produced by SeventeenTwelve Spirits (Foothills Distillery), a young distillery run by two native North Carolina men. They state they aim to make “from grain to glass” batches of spirit made from 100% North Carolina grains, which is thus what is at the heart of this bourbon –  hand-selected corn (Hedrick), rye (Hedrick Abruzzi) and malted barley (Riverbend Two-Row) from local Carolina farmers.

This bourbon, bottled at 86 proof, was double distilled and then aged in new oak barrels which were interestingly filled with yellow birch. What results from this, without any charcoal filtering, is a non-age statement expression that has ” an abundant flavor and hints of butterscotch” in its taste profile.

Should you want to hunt down a bottle of Seventeen Twelve Bourbon to see what a North Carolina version of America’s favorite whiskey is like, there’s one retailer selling it online for around $30. You can also buy it from North Carolina liquor stores, when it is in stock, and also at the distillery.

It should be noted as well the distillery buying option is apparently a very limited choice at the moment, as current state liquor laws only allow you to buy one bottle per person per year. This perhaps explains in some ways why it has taken this long for craft whiskey to take off there given this type of near Prohibition style restriction.