Review: Redwood Empire The Hyperion

Bay Area, California-based Redwood Empire recently dropped a new limited edition offering dubbed “The Hyperion,” named after the world’s tallest living tree in California’s Redwood National Park, which it calls its most ambitious project yet. What’s in the bottle? A little bit of everything.

Creating “The Hyperion” Batch 001 began, intentionally, without an established path. Redwood Empire’s Master Distiller-Master Blender duo explored a broad terrain of mature barrels, crossing the traditional boundaries separating bourbon, rye, wheat whiskey, and single malt whiskey. The resulting 110-proof expression brings together four distinct whiskey categories, more than 10 mashbills, and stocks aged from 7 to 14 years, arriving at a destination no single whiskey could reach on its own.

“The Hyperion is an exercise in artistry. Regal, refined, bold. A collaboration of spirit types that fully brings to light the depth and diversity of our barrel inventory,” said Lauren Patz, Master Blender at Redwood Empire Whiskey. “Wheat Whiskey, Bourbon, Rye, and American Single Malt find both balance and transformation and demonstrate what can emerge when curiosity is matched with patience and purpose.”

In lieu of a traditional mash bill, the inaugural label instead boasts a blend bill—a collection of whiskey blends, rather than simply mashes—of 32% bourbon whiskey, 30% rye whiskey, 25% wheat whiskey, and 13% single malt whiskey. The final blend of approximately 79 barrels combines multiple mash bills from curated whiskey stocks from Redwood Empire and other distillers in Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Each category combines multiple mash bills from a total of 50-100 barrels of curated whiskey stocks from Redwood Empire and others distilled in Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The single malt component is entirely grain-to-glass whiskey distilled by Redwood Empire. The blended whiskey entered the barrel between 110 and 120 proof and matured in toasted, Char No. 3 barrels. Maturation takes place in Northern California, where warm days give way to fog-laced cool winds off the Pacific at night.

Whoa.

Also dig the wooden bottle stopper, another unique and very cool touch to cap off an interesting spirit.

Redwood Empire The Hyperion Review

The whiskey noses with the expected complexity, but sweetness dominates. Vanilla syrup, short of cake frosting but getting there, meanders toward chocolate syrup, raspberry glaze, and a stone fruit compote. Increasingly spicy and nutty as it gets a bit of air, the whiskey’s buttery core never loses any steam at all.

The palate finds many of the same elements but ups the ante further. Sweet and buttery, it drinks like well-slathered cinnamon toast, almost syrupy in texture at times. Coconut is dominant on the midpalate, again creamy to the point where it feels like it could fit in in a pina colada. This lingers for ages before segueing toward milk chocolate, caramel, and toffee notes, with touches of brown banana creating something of a banana split character. Dollops of whipped cream top things off.

All told, this is a far sunnier and sweeter whiskey than I was expecting, perhaps unexpectedly driven by the wheat whiskey in the blend. I’m not mad at it.

Reviewed: Batch 1. 110 proof.

A- / $99

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