Frank August Small Batch Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

By the sleek look of the bottle and its website, it’d be easy to assume “Frank August” is a celeb or some eccentric midcentury design-loving CEO. In reality, the name is derived from being frank, or as the brand tells it: “The state of being open, honest, and sincere.” The idea behind the project was to blend the world of traditional bourbon whiskey with modernity in a single bottle — plus it looks cool as hell, which is a nice perk.

 

The whiskey is a sourced bourbon. The juice is made in Kentucky, where it’s also aged. The team at Frank August then takes roughly ten to 15 barrels per batch and builds this bourbon painstakingly to fit their desired flavor profile. The whiskey is then lightly proofed down to 100 proof before bottling.

 

The nose is pure classic bourbon with hints of salted caramel with a twinge of soft grains next to spicy cherry syrup, a whisper of sour apple, and a touch of aged oak staves soaked in mulled wine. The palate moves on from the soft grains towards rum-soaked raisins with a warm winter spice matrix — cinnamon, ginger, clove, allspice — before a brown sugar/rock candy sweetness takes over on the mid-palate. The finish is long and sweet with a nice dose of sharp cinnamon and soft nutmeg that leads to a supple vanilla cream with a thin line of dry cedar and tobacco spice just touched with dark cherry on the very end.