Milam & Greene's Unabridged Volume 4 Earns Double Platinum at the ASCOT Awards
There's a craft distillery sitting in Blanco, Texas — a small Hill Country town about 80 miles outside Austin — that has been quietly building one of the more impressive award records in American whiskey. Milam & Greene Whiskey doesn't rely on a century of history or a famous family name. What they have instead is a team of people who know whiskey at an unusually deep level, and a process that treats the Texas climate as an asset rather than a liability.
Image credit: Milam & Greene
The latest result of that approach just came back from the 2026 ASCOT Awards: Unabridged Volume 4 took home Double Platinum — the highest honor the competition gives out, awarded only when every judge on the panel agrees unanimously. Not a majority. Not a strong showing. Every single taster in the room on the same page at the same time.
For a bourbon built from just eight barrels, that outcome says quite a lot.
Who Built This Thing
To understand the bottle, it helps to understand the people. Milam & Greene was founded in 2019 by Texas entrepreneur Marsha Milam, and the brand name reflects both her and the woman she brought in to lead blending — Heather Greene, who serves as CEO and Master Blender. Greene came to whiskey through Scotland, developing her palate with the Scotch Malt Whisky Society before making her way into the American market. She also wrote a book on whiskey, which is more than a footnote — the Unabridged series itself is a literary-themed project, a direct nod to her background as an author. An unabridged book is one that hasn't been edited or cut down, which is exactly how these releases are presented: full strength, nothing removed.
The third key figure is Master Distiller Marlene Holmes, who started her career in 1990 at Jim Beam, learning the craft under Booker Noe — one of the most legendary names bourbon has ever produced. Holmes spent more than three decades in Kentucky before heading to Texas to help build something new at Milam & Greene. That kind of background doesn't happen often in a craft operation. She has since been inducted into the Whisky Magazine Hall of Fame, making her one of the most decorated active distillers working in America today.
Between Greene's blending expertise and Holmes's decades on the distilling side, Milam & Greene brings a level of combined experience to Blanco, Texas that most operations four times their size would struggle to match.
A Series With a Track Record
The Unabridged line has been running since 2022, and its history is worth knowing before getting into Volume 4. Volume 1 launched that year and won Double Platinum at the ASCOT Awards. Volume 2 came out in 2023 and did it again — back-to-back Double Platinum — while also landing on whiskey expert Fred Minnick's Top 25 Whiskeys of the year list. Volume 3 followed and, in blind tastings at the distillery, outperformed the previous two releases.
That's the baseline. Three releases, consistent recognition, a reputation for delivering at a high level every time. Volume 4 didn't just have to be good. It had to justify the series.
It did.
Eight Barrels Instead of Fifty
Previous Unabridged volumes were built from large groups of barrels — upward of fifty in some cases. Volume 4 took a completely different direction. The team selected just eight casks, sourced from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas, and the blend came together so cleanly that there was no reason to reach for more. When a combination of barrels achieves that kind of harmony, adding more would only dilute what's already working.
Image credit: Milam & Greene
Kentucky provides the classic bourbon backbone — the depth, the grain character, the familiar sweetness that defines the American style. Tennessee contributes its own regional personality, adding structure and balance. Texas, specifically the Hill Country environment where Milam & Greene operates, shapes the finish in ways the other states simply can't replicate.
The Hill Country is not a gentle climate. Temperature swings of significant magnitude can happen within a single week. That kind of volatility forces wood to expand and contract aggressively, which drives the whiskey deeper into the barrel and pulls more from the oak in a shorter amount of time. The result is a richness and texture that typically demands many more years in cooler, more stable climates.
Texification
The Milam & Greene team calls their Texas finishing process "Texification," and it's become something of a house signature. After the casks from the three states are selected, they're brought together and married in the Texas Hill Country heat. The environment does the rest — accelerating development, concentrating flavors, and adding the kind of depth usually associated with much older whiskey.
Volume 4 went through that process, and it shows in the glass.
What's Actually in the Bottle
The ABV is 59.2% — 118.4 proof. The bottle is unfiltered and cask strength, meaning what's inside is exactly what the barrel produced. Nothing has been watered down, and nothing has been stripped away through filtering.
The color is burnt umber, a deep reddish-brown that signals serious wood contact and real concentration. On the nose, there's candied dates, dark chocolate, brûléed sugar, almond paste, and a subtle presence of oak. At this proof level, a faint trace of ethanol is expected and honest — the notable thing is how restrained it is.
The palate opens up as creamy and dense, with green apple and cherry cordial cutting through a base of maple syrup, sweet yeast bread, and caramel-covered popcorn. That combination — bright fruit against rich grain sweetness and baked bread — is the kind of complexity that usually takes a decade or more of aging to develop through conventional means.
The finish is long and smooth. Grain-forward notes settle in alongside spearmint and caramel, the overall impression landing somewhere close to warm bread pudding with crème fraîche and a touch of mint. It lingers, which is what a well-built cask-strength bourbon should do.
What the ASCOT Judges Said
The tasting panel's notes were direct and unadorned: "Lush with baking spice, this higher proof spirit would be perfect for someone who enjoyed a dry bourbon with a touch of sweetness in the nose and the palate. Balanced and nice."
Balanced and nice. Coming from a panel that tastes hundreds of spirits and has no reason to reach for superlatives, those are meaningful words. They tell you the whiskey doesn't fight itself at high proof, that the sweetness is present but not overwhelming, and that the overall experience is cohesive rather than one-dimensional. That's harder to achieve than it sounds at 118 proof.
Why Cask Strength Is Worth Understanding
Cask strength releases appeal to serious bourbon drinkers for a straightforward reason: they show exactly what the distillery made, without the buffer of added water. Every element of the process — grain selection, distillation, time in wood, finishing climate — lands in the glass at full intensity. There's no room to mask a weak cask or compensate for imbalance.
That's also what makes a unanimous Double Platinum win at this proof level meaningful. The judges tasted it as it is, and they all agreed.
For those who prefer a lower-proof experience, adding a few drops of water or a single piece of ice opens the whiskey up further. But it holds together well neat, which is the truest test of whether a cask-strength bourbon was blended with skill or just bottled for the sake of the label.
The Credentials Keep Piling Up
Milam & Greene has been collecting recognition at a pace that's unusual for a distillery that's only been operating since 2019. Heather Greene was named Master Blender of the Year in 2023. The distillery itself was recognized as Rising Star Spirits Company of the Year that same year by the ASCOT Awards. Marlene Holmes was named Master Distiller of the Year in 2024 and inducted into the Whisky Magazine Hall of Fame — the 99th inductee and the first American woman distiller to receive that distinction.
That's a remarkable amount of industry acknowledgment in a short amount of time. It reflects a team that came into the Texas whiskey scene prepared, not just enthusiastic.
The Smallest Batch, the Strongest Result
The particular achievement of Volume 4 is that it accomplished the most with the least. Fifty-plus barrels became eight. The yield is the smallest in the series' history. And the result is the same top honor the ASCOT Awards give out, decided unanimously.
That's not coincidence. It reflects a blending philosophy that prioritizes quality of selection over volume of production — a willingness to stop at eight barrels when those eight barrels say everything that needs to be said.
The bottle retails at $94.99 for 750ml and comes in a gift box that details the specific casks used in the blend. It's the kind of transparency that rewards people who want to understand what they're drinking, not just consume it.
The Bottom Line
Milam & Greene built something real in Blanco, Texas. A team with extraordinary credentials, a finishing process tied to one of the most demanding climates in American whiskey, and a blending series that has now won Double Platinum at the ASCOT Awards multiple times across its run. Volume 4 is the smallest batch they've released under the Unabridged name and the most decorated entry in the series so far.
At under a hundred dollars for a cask-strength bourbon with that kind of pedigree — made by a Hall of Fame distiller and a Master Blender of the Year, finished in Texas Hill Country heat, and approved unanimously by a professional tasting panel — the case for adding a bottle to the shelf is a straightforward one.
