Deep in the heart of Texas Hill Country, a tiny batch of bourbon just hit the shelves that might make a grown man stare at his glass and forget the football game is on. Milam & Greene Whiskey released Unabridged Volume 4 this month, and if you manage to get your hands on a bottle, you’ll understand why some guys are already calling it the best thing the distillery has ever put out.
This isn’t some mass-produced shelf filler. Only eight barrels went into the whole run. Eight. That’s it. When master blender Heather Greene, master distiller Marlene Holmes, and operations director Rikk Munroe sat down to taste through the rickhouses, these eight casks stood up and said everything that needed saying. No need for fifty barrels like the earlier Unabridged releases. Sometimes less really is a whole lot more.
They pulled stock from Kentucky, Tennessee, and their own stills in Blanco, Texas, then let the brutal Texas heat do what it does best – hammer the wood and pull out every drop of flavor those barrels were willing to give. The folks at Milam & Greene call it “Texification,” and once you nose this bourbon you’ll know exactly what they mean.
Here’s exactly what’s in your glass:
- 8% ten-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon
- 10% nine-year-old Tennessee straight bourbon
- 40% eight-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon
- 23% seven-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon
- 4% six-year-old Texas straight bourbon made with malted rye
- 15% five-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon made with malted rye
Put it all together, leave it unfiltered, bottle it at full cask strength, and you land at 118.4 proof. That sounds like it should kick like a mule, but somehow it doesn’t. The ethanol hides in the corner while waves of flavor roll across your tongue.
Pour it out and the color hits you first – a deep burnt umber that looks like it’s been sitting in the sun since the Alamo. Raise the glass and you get dark chocolate, candied dates, almond paste, and that brûléed sugar note you only find in the really good stuff. First sip is thick and creamy – green apple, real maple, cherry cordial, fresh-baked yeast bread, and caramel corn still warm from the kettle. It’s ridiculous how smooth something this strong can feel.
Then the finish shows up and parks itself for the evening. Warm grain, spearmint, caramel, a little crème fraîche – it’s like somebody took the best sticky bread pudding you ever had, added a mint sprig, and decided it belonged in a bourbon glass. You’ll catch yourself tipping the bottle toward the light just to see if there’s one more pour hiding in there.
The women running the show aren’t new to this game. Marlene Holmes has thirty-five years under her belt and just became the first American woman – and the first distiller in Texas – inducted into the Whisky Hall of Fame. Heather Greene took home Master Blender of the Year in 2023. When those two start pulling barrels with Rikk Munroe, good things happen. Real good things.
If you’ve ever driven the back roads around Blanco, you’ve probably seen the distillery sitting off 165 – small, unassuming, copper pot stills glinting in the sun. That’s where part of this bourbon was born. The rest came from classic column stills in Kentucky and some closely guarded partner distilleries in Tennessee. Different climates, different rickhouses, different stories in every stave. They bring it all to Texas, let the heat go to work, and the result tastes like nothing else on the shelf.
At $94.99 this one isn’t cheap, but when you figure most of the juice is eight to ten years old, bottled exactly the way it came out of the wood, and there’s only eight barrels total in the whole country – suddenly it feels like a bargain. Good luck finding it though. Most of the allocation is already spoken for by the folks who lined up at the distillery door the morning the trucks rolled in.
If you’re the kind of man who keeps a decent bottle for when the work is done and the fire is going, Unabridged Volume 4 belongs on that short list. Pour it neat, give it a minute to breathe, and let those eight barrels tell you their story. You’ll hear every word. And when the glass is empty, you’ll understand why sometimes the shortest book on the shelf is the one you’ll read again and again.
