A limited release pulls from the Pacific Northwest to push Kentucky bourbon into new territory
Bardstown Bourbon Company is not the kind of outfit that sits still. Since opening its doors in Kentucky, the distillery has built a reputation for doing things differently — not for the sake of being different, but because the people running the place genuinely believe that the best bourbon hasn't been made yet. That philosophy is on full display in 2026 with the return of their Distillery Reserve program, and this year's entry is one that turns a lot of heads: the Cascadia Garryana Oak Barrel Finish.
Image credit: Bardstown Bourbon Company
Available beginning March 20, 2026, this release is limited to extremely small quantities and can only be picked up in person — either at the distillery gift shop in Bardstown, Kentucky, or at the brand's Tasting Room in Louisville. If you want it, you're going to have to show up.
What Makes Garryana Oak So Special
To understand why this release matters, you first need to understand the wood at the center of it.
Garryana oak — sometimes called Oregon white oak — is native to the Pacific Northwest. It grows most comfortably in the Willamette Valley, that stretch of Oregon wine country that sits between two mountain ranges and collects enough rain to keep the forests thick and healthy. But here's the thing about Garryana: you can't just plant it, grow it, and mill it on demand. The wood cannot be farmed or harvested at will. Cooperages can only work with trees that have already fallen or come from sanctioned harvests. That alone makes it one of the rarest raw materials in the barrel-making business.
Its scarcity isn't the only thing worth noting. The grain structure of Garryana oak is noticeably denser than the American white oak that's responsible for most of what lands in your bourbon glass. That density slows down oxidation and evaporation during aging, which changes the way the whiskey interacts with the wood over time. And in terms of flavor, Garryana behaves more like French oak than American — bringing clove, nutmeg, and a deeper spice character rather than the vanilla-heavy sweetness most bourbon drinkers are used to.
Image credit: Bardstown Bourbon Company
For a whiskey producer to actually use this wood in barrels is a genuine rarity. For a Kentucky bourbon company to build an entire release around it is something else entirely.
How the Whiskey Was Made
Bardstown didn't just source some unusual barrels and call it a day. The process behind Cascadia was methodical from start to finish.
The base spirit is a blend of three separate bourbons, each aged between nine and ten years. Crucially, each of the three bourbons comes from a different mashbill — meaning different ratios of corn, rye, and malted barley. Blending across multiple mashbills gives the Master Blender more tools to work with, layering in different flavor contributions before the wood even enters the picture.
Once the three bourbons were blended together, the liquid went into ten custom barrels handmade by Oregon Barrel Works, a micro-cooperage out of the Pacific Northwest that produces only about 1,000 barrels per year. That's not a misprint. For context, large commercial cooperages can produce that many barrels in a matter of days. Oregon Barrel Works operates at a completely different scale — closer to a woodworking shop than an industrial facility — and they handle the process from raw timber all the way through to finished barrel.
Image credit: Bardstown Bourbon Company
The barrels made for this release were given a three-hour toast. Toasting, as opposed to charring, involves applying lower, slower heat to the inside of the barrel. A longer toast like this pushes deeper into the wood, accessing the "red layer" — a zone just beneath the surface where concentrated sugars and spice compounds develop. Pulling flavor from that layer adds complexity that a standard finish wouldn't get close to.
Those ten barrels, filled with the blended bourbon, then went up to the sixth floor of the Bardstown warehouse to spend the summer. Upper floors of traditional rickhouses run hotter, which drives the whiskey in and out of the wood more aggressively and speeds up extraction. After the ten-month finishing period wrapped up, the proof was gradually brought down over time rather than all at once — a deliberate step to let the blend fully knit together before bottling.
What Dan Callaway Had to Say
Dan Callaway, Master Blender at Bardstown Bourbon Company, was involved in the collaboration with Oregon Barrel Works from early on. He described the partnership in direct terms:
"It was a thrill to partner with Oregon Barrel Works, who truly operates from tree to barrel. The definition of hands-on artisan coopering. Its structure and chemistry create a flavor experience unlike any other — rich, spicy, and deeply expressive of its origin. This release is a celebration of craftsmanship and the beauty of regional terroir."
The word "terroir" gets thrown around a lot in wine circles, but it's earning real traction in the whiskey world. The idea is simple enough: where something comes from affects what it tastes like. The soil, the climate, the way a tree grew over decades — all of it leaves a mark. With Garryana oak sourced from Oregon and bourbon distilled in Kentucky, Cascadia is in some ways a cross-country collaboration baked right into the barrel.
Tasting Notes
The finished whiskey is bottled at 107.5 proof — strong enough to stand up to a little water or ice if you want it, but not so overpowering that it can't be sipped neat. On the nose, the release opens with maple over toasted oak, toffee, and vanilla crème. The palate is full-bodied, delivering baked cherry, cigar box, and butterscotch in a combination that feels rich without being cloying. The finish is medium in tannin with what's described as rich wood sugar coating everything on the way down.
Image credit: Bardstown Bourbon Company
That cigar box note in the middle is worth calling out specifically. It's the kind of flavor that doesn't show up in every bourbon, and it points directly to what Garryana oak brings to the table — a drier, more savory undercurrent that keeps the sweetness from going too far.
The bottle is the Distillery Reserve's standard 375mL format — a half-bottle — priced at $99.99.
The Distillery Reserve Program
Cascadia is the second year of the Distillery Reserve, a platform Bardstown launched in 2025 specifically to explore releases that wouldn't fit in a standard lineup. The model is built around one-time-only batches: each release uses an unusual finishing barrel, extended aging, or a blending approach that can't be replicated, and when it's gone, it's gone.
The 2025 releases under this program covered a lot of ground. Cathedral French Oak, Hokkaido Mizunara Oak, and Normandie Calvados Brandy Barrel all drew strong responses from critics and consumers, helping solidify Bardstown's position as one of the most experimentally-minded distilleries in the country. Mizunara oak, in particular, is famously difficult to work with, and the fact that Bardstown pulled it off successfully set expectations high heading into 2026.
Bardstown's Larger Story
The Distillery Reserve didn't come out of nowhere. Bardstown Bourbon Company has spent the last several years accumulating the kind of credentials that make releases like Cascadia possible.
The distillery was named Icons of Whisky Global Brand Innovator of the Year in 2025 and took IWSC's Worldwide Whisky Producer of the Year honor in 2023. It's also the only brand to have appeared on Whisky Advocate's Top 20 list in five different years — 2019, and then every year from 2021 through 2025. Those aren't the numbers of a distillery playing it safe.
Bardstown Bourbon Company is part of Lofted Spirits, one of the larger American whiskey operations in the country. Despite that scale, the Distillery Reserve program is about as far from mass production as it gets — ten barrels, one summer, one window to buy it.
Worth the Trip
There's no online purchase option here. No allocation system where you enter a lottery and hope a bottle shows up on your doorstep. The only way to get a bottle of Cascadia Garryana Oak Barrel Finish is to walk into Bardstown's distillery gift shop in Kentucky or their Louisville Tasting Room and pick it up yourself.
For serious bourbon drinkers, that kind of limitation is part of the appeal. Bardstown sits along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, which makes it a natural stop for anyone already making the rounds through the state. Louisville is even more accessible, sitting just off the interstate and close to a number of other well-known distilleries.
What the program offers is a chance to taste something that genuinely won't be made again — a blend of aged bourbons finished in wood sourced from fallen Pacific Northwest trees, built by a cooperage that measures its annual output in hundreds, not thousands. That's a narrow window, and for the bourbon world, Cascadia represents exactly the kind of release worth planning a stop around.
