Redwood Empire's Screaming Titan Is California's Most Serious Argument for Wheated Bourbon
California has never had much trouble commanding attention in the world of fermented grain, but whiskey is a different animal altogether. The state's wine culture is dominant, its craft beer scene is relentless, and for most of American whiskey history, the Golden State barely registered as a footnote. That is changing — and few producers are making the case more deliberately than Redwood Empire Whiskey, whose latest Small Lot release, Screaming Titan Wheated Bourbon, arrives as perhaps the most confident single expression yet from a distillery that has been quietly building toward this kind of moment since 2015.
Screaming Titan is not a gimmick, a novelty, or a whiskey that leans on its geography as a crutch. It is a carefully constructed wheated bourbon with a four-grain mash bill, a minimum five-year age statement, hand-selected barrels sourced from California, Indiana, and Kentucky, and a bottling proof of 96. What it represents, though, goes beyond the liquid in the bottle. It is an assertion — made in oak and grain — that the Northern California coast has something unique and irreplaceable to offer the American whiskey conversation.
The Origin Story: From Russian River Valley to Mare Island
A Decade Built on Patience and Redwood Forests
In 2013, founder Derek Benham recognized the potential of Northern California's cool, temperate climate for aging whiskey slowly and evenly, and two years later, ground was broken on a distillery in the small town of Graton, nestled in the Russian River Valley and surrounded by redwoods. The location was deliberate. The cool climate of the Northern California Coast creates ideal conditions for producing sublime craft whiskey, as aging barrels there allows for a slow and even extraction of flavor, producing a whiskey of exceptional balance and complexity.
The distillery was founded in 2015 by Derek Benham, a seasoned entrepreneur, and master distiller Jeff Duckhorn, whose shared passion, alongside the expertise of master blender Lauren Patz, has allowed them to stay competitive in the craft whiskey market. That combination of industry experience and genuine curiosity about a new production region has been central to everything Redwood Empire has done since.
Redwood initially entered the scene sometime in 2019 with barrels of highly-aged MGP bourbon that they finished in wine barrels — these were 12-year-old barrels — or straight from the barrel in 14- and 15-year-old expressions. That was the introduction, but the real ambition was always grain-to-glass. Redwood's plan was never to solely source barrels of bourbon to sell — they were also making their own, beginning in 2016, at a rapid pace.
A Move That Changes Everything
The distillery's story took a sharp turn at the end of 2024. Derek Benham announced the acquisition of Savage & Cooke distillery, a pivotal investment that marks a new chapter for Redwood Empire, offering the ability to meet soaring demand while maintaining the highest quality and establishing a premier visitor destination for enthusiasts. Redwood Empire moved production to the Savage & Cooke distillery, which is located on Mare Island, a former naval base north of San Francisco.
The facility itself is historically significant in a way that suits the brand's character. The island built 89 seagoing vessels over nearly 150 years, including 44 submarines, and the USS California was constructed in the dry dock now connected to the distillery. The production space occupies two 19th-century brick buildings, one dedicated to whiskey-making and anchored by a three-story, 20-inch Vendome hybrid still designed for deep, consistent flavor.
In 2025, a decade after laying down its first barrel, Redwood Empire moved operations to Mare Island, north of San Francisco, where it tripled capacity to 14 barrels a day — still small by industry standards, where many distilleries produce well over 300 barrels daily, but a deliberate choice to go slow with intent. That philosophy of patience is woven directly into what ended up in the bottle of Screaming Titan.
Redwood Empire's 2024 volumes grew aggressively by 30% to 55,000 nine-liter cases — a remarkable figure for a craft operation and a sign that the market is responding to something real, not just clever marketing. Aaron Webb, CEO of Purple Brands, Redwood Empire's parent company, noted: "This acquisition solidifies Redwood Empire's position as a serious American Whiskey player. Demand for our offerings has far exceeded our production capacity for several years."
The Small Lot Series: Where the Real Experimentation Lives
A Platform for Craft Exploration
In a bold move to captivate the market, Redwood Empire unveiled its Small Lot Series at the dawn of 2024, a collection described as a testament to their spirit of innovation, applying their signature style to products with a distinct focus. It was a calculated step beyond the core lineup — a place for the distillery to work out ideas that couldn't fit within the defined parameters of the flagships.
The launch was announced on January 31, 2024, with Master Distiller Jeff Duckhorn describing the series this way: "The Small Lot Series is a testament to our passion for whiskey making and our desire to share unique expressions with discerning drinkers. Each whiskey in this series is a result of meticulous attention to detail, from grain selection and distillation to barrel aging and blending." The series kicks off with three distinct whiskeys, each embodying the distillery's commitment to experimentation and pushing the boundaries of what whiskey can be.
Among the most anticipated releases was Foggy Burl, an American Single Malt paying tribute to the burly trees of the coastal redwood forests, followed by Devil's Tower, a four-grain bour-rye. The final of the three, Screaming Titan, is their inaugural wheated bourbon, named after a majestic coastal redwood over 323 feet tall.
The Other Two Releases in Context
Devils Tower High Rye Bourbon features a prominent rye component of 45% in the mash bill, showcasing the perfect blend of spice and sweetness while maintaining the viscosity and mouthfeel of corn. This single lot, grain-to-glass release was artfully blended from 25 barrels and bottled at 99 proof. The contrast between that expression and Screaming Titan is precisely the point — they sit at opposite ends of the grain spectrum, illustrating just how much a mash bill shapes personality.
Head Distiller Lauren Patz framed the significance of the series plainly. "These new products represent our interest and ability to explore within the realm of distillation. Batch 001 represents our dedication to continued growth for our brand," she said. That measured language understates what is actually happening here: a California distillery is using its own grain-to-glass product to define what West Coast whiskey can taste like across a full spectrum of styles.
Inside Screaming Titan: The Mash Bill, the Barrels, and the Proof
A Grain Bill That Makes a Statement
The wheated bourbon category in America has long been dominated by Kentucky powerhouses — Maker's Mark, the Weller line, Old Fitzgerald — all riding the reputation of wheat as a softening, sweetening alternative to rye. Screaming Titan enters that space with a mash bill built to compete directly. The bourbon is made with a mash bill of 59% corn, 30% wheat, 7% rye, and 4% malted barley. That wheat figure is substantial. By comparison, Maker's Mark runs approximately 16% wheat, and the Weller expressions from Buffalo Trace typically sit around 16-20%. Screaming Titan's 30% wheat is an aggressive commitment.
Hand-selected barrels aged at least five years, Screaming Titan showcases 30% wheat in the mash bill — cutting into some of the richness and viscosity of corn, this larger wheat component lightens the bourbon up a bit and lets honey floral notes shine through. The effect on flavor is profound. Rye brings sharp, peppery, sometimes herbal aggression to a bourbon; wheat is the opposite — it softens, it smooths, it allows the corn sweetness and the vanilla pulled from oak to take center stage without interference.
Screaming Titan uses a mash bill of approximately 61% corn, 30% wheat, 5% rye, and 4% malted barley, and the high wheat content enhances notes of honey, vanilla, and baked sweetness while toning down aggressive spice. For a drinker who finds some bourbons too sharp or too tannic, this is a formula designed with their glass specifically in mind — without sacrificing the structure that aging and a meaningful corn base provide.
Barrel Selection and Aging Conditions
Screaming Titan was aged for at least five years in toasted and charred (char #3) barrels. The toasting step before charring is not universal across American whiskey — it is more commonly associated with wine barrel production — and its presence here is telling. Toasting caramelizes the wood sugars in the staves before the char creates the filtration layer and the red layer that lends color. The result is a barrel that imparts more complex sweet and dried-fruit notes alongside the classic vanilla and caramel of a standard char.
According to the back label, this is a blend of California, Indiana, and Kentucky barrels, hand-selected and aged at least five years. That multi-state sourcing is a deliberate quality move rather than a compromise. Indiana — home to MGP Ingredients in Lawrenceburg — has long been one of the most respected sources of contract distillate in America, producing liquid that has underpinned dozens of celebrated craft and independent brands. Kentucky barrels bring the heritage and character of the Bluegrass State's limestone-filtered water and decades of oak exposure. The California barrels bring what the Russian River Valley's cool maritime climate uniquely provides: aging amid the temperate climate of the Northern California coast, amid towering redwoods, fosters a slow and even extraction of flavors, resulting in a bourbon that boasts exceptional balance and complexity.
The small lot release is composed of 50 hand-selected barrels aged at least five years. At that scale, every barrel matters. This is not a blend assembled from hundreds of casks where individual character gets averaged out — it is a tight, curated selection where the blender's eye is doing real work.
Proof and Presentation
Aged for at least five years and bottled at 96 proof, it offers complexity without overpowering heat. Forty-eight percent ABV is a considered choice. It's high enough to preserve the weight and mouthfeel that a wheated mash bill can sometimes lose when diluted too aggressively, but well short of cask strength territory that might alarm a drinker who came to Screaming Titan looking for the soft, honey-forward profile its grain bill promises. At $85 MSRP, it positions itself in the serious craft tier — above everyday shelf bourbons, in the company of bottles that consumers approach with intention.
What It Tastes Like: Tasting Notes and Sensory Profile
Nose
The nose opens with honey, vanilla bean, caramel, orchard fruit, light cinnamon, and subtle floral sweetness. That progression tells the story of the grain bill working in real time. The honey and floral notes come directly from the wheat — these are the aromatic signatures that wheat-forward mash bills characteristically deliver when well-aged. The vanilla bean and caramel speak to time in new charred oak, and the orchard fruit — think ripe apple, fresh pear, maybe a whisper of white peach — is almost certainly a contribution from the California barrels, whose slower, cooler aging cycle tends to develop fruit-forward character rather than the aggressive spice extraction common in hotter warehouse environments.
Batch 002, which followed the initial release, shows slight evolution in the aromatic profile. The nose on Batch 002 presents nectarine, sweet tea, and apple blossoms — a lighter, more orchard-driven direction that suggests the blending team is actively refining its barrel selections with each iteration, pushing toward more expressive fruit character as the house California stocks age further into maturity.
Palate
The palate is smooth and rounded with layers of vanilla cream, toasted caramel, baked bread, soft fruit, graham cracker, and gentle oak spice. That baked bread note is a signature of the toasted barrel program — the same phenomenon encountered in certain cognac-style productions where toast caramelization imparts a warm, pastry-like quality that new-charred-only barrels rarely produce. Graham cracker is a more evocative way of saying sweetened, lightly toasted grain, and it works here because the wheat mash bill has created a grain-driven sweetness that melds with the wood contribution rather than fighting it.
The Batch 002 palate follows through on what the nose promises: honeycomb, flaky pastry, and peaches and cream. These notes — honeycomb especially — are among the most distinctive signatures in American wheated bourbon, and they are difficult to achieve without both the grain foundation and sufficient time in oak to develop them. A younger whiskey rushed to market rarely shows honeycomb. It takes patience.
Character and Finish
The Screaming Titan Wheated Bourbon offers a softer, more rounded profile thanks to its wheat grain component, and is perfect for those who appreciate a milder yet intricate flavor, showcasing notes of honey, apple, and a touch of spice. The finish, from most accounts, is clean and of medium-to-long length — the hallmark of a well-aged wheated bourbon where the oak influence has had time to round out the edges without drying into astringency.
The Naming Tradition: Every Bottle Tells a Story From the Forest
It would be easy to dismiss the tree-naming convention as clever branding, but at Redwood Empire it runs deeper than marketing copy. When the time came to bottle, the distillery honored the ancient forests surrounding it and named its whiskey Redwood Empire. Every expression is tied to a protected tree and carries a quote from John Muir, the father of our national parks.
The name "Screaming Titan" pays homage to a remarkable coastal redwood located near The Lost Monarch in the Grove of Titans. Screaming Titan is their inaugural wheated bourbon, named after a majestic coastal redwood over 323 feet tall. The story goes that naturalist Michael W. Taylor screamed when he first spotted the trees inside the Grove of Titans in the late 1990s. There is something appropriate about that origin story for a whiskey: the involuntary vocal response to encountering something unexpectedly magnificent.
Many of these towering icons — like "Pipe Dream," the 14th largest redwood on earth, and "Emerald Giant," the fastest-growing tree in the world — have inspired the names of the distillery's whiskies. The Lost Monarch, the Screaming Titan, the Grizzly Beast — each name carries genuine weight when you know what it refers to. These aren't invented brand identities. They are the names naturalists and conservationists gave to specific, identifiable trees standing in groves that have survived centuries of logging, fire, and development.
Once blanketed by ancient trees stretching the length of the coast, this 420-mile forest was one of the most majestic ecosystems on earth. Today, less than 3% of that original redwood forest remains, and what's left stands protected in pockets thanks to early conservationists like John Muir. Every bottle of Screaming Titan carries that history implicitly — and explicitly, through the environmental commitments Redwood Empire has made since founding.
The Environmental Backbone: Trees for Every Bottle
To ensure the health of tomorrow's forests, the company formed an environmental-based alliance with non-profits that has resulted in planting over 1.7 million trees and still counting. That figure is not a rounding error — it is one of the most tangible environmental commitments in the American craft spirits industry, and it scales directly with sales. The distillery plants one tree for every bottle sold.
Guided by John Muir's inspiring legacy, Redwood Empire's commitment to environmental protection is not just a slogan but a way of life. From its energy-conserving column still to its partnered commitment to plant a tree for every bottle sold, Redwood Empire is more than a product — it's an ode to sustainable practices in the spirits industry. The distillery's warehouse is powered substantially by solar energy. For a consumer increasingly thoughtful about where their spending lands, this alignment between product and values is not incidental — it is part of why the brand's 30% volume growth in 2024 makes sense.
California Whiskey at a Crossroads: What Screaming Titan Means for the Industry
The Western Frontier of American Bourbon
In the drinks world, California is far and above the top winemaking hub in the United States, both in sheer volume and acclaim. And while the Golden State is no stranger to craft distilling, particularly with brandy production, California whiskeys are few and far between — but that is beginning to change. Redwood Empire's rise is happening precisely at the moment when American whiskey drinkers are showing genuine curiosity about what geography does to the spirit in the glass.
The conventional wisdom about whiskey terroir holds that climate drives barrel interaction: hot warehouses in Kentucky and Tennessee push spirit in and out of the wood more aggressively with the seasons, pulling more oak, more caramel, more tannin faster. The California Coast operates differently. Aged entirely at the distillery, California whiskey expressions aged in a cool climate show less intense barrel influences and are more nuanced as a result. That distinction is not a lesser outcome — it is a different outcome. The nuance that comes from slower extraction over five-plus years is exactly the kind of character that whiskey collectors with refined palates have come to seek out.
Head Distiller Lauren Patz has articulated the distillery's ambitions clearly. "We have many goals as a company for our products," she says, "but I think one of our biggest ones is to kind of be a benchmark for California whiskey." Screaming Titan is the most pointed argument yet in favor of that claim — it is a release that plays directly in the most beloved sub-category of American bourbon (wheated), does so with transparency about its sourcing and production, and uses its California-aged components to add something the Midwest cannot replicate.
The Sourcing Question in Modern Craft Whiskey
The blend of California, Indiana, and Kentucky barrels in Screaming Titan raises a question that the modern craft whiskey world grapples with constantly: what does "craft" mean when some of the liquid comes from large-scale Indiana distilleries? The answer, increasingly, is that it is a question of intent and transparency. Redwood Empire has never hidden its sourcing. Starting in 2016, Duckhorn and Benham began selecting and transporting aged barrels of whiskey from Kentucky and Tennessee back to Sonoma County. At the same time, they began to distill and lay down the equivalent of 20,000 nine-liter cases each year.
The approach mirrors what successful independent bottlers and blending houses have done in Scotch whisky for generations — selecting mature casks from multiple distilleries, blending for a coherent house profile, and contributing original distillate to that blend as the in-house stocks mature. What sets Redwood Empire apart is its focus on aged spirits. While many American distilleries bottle younger whiskies, Redwood Empire incorporates older, mature whiskey stocks into its blends, creating complexity and depth of flavor.
Competing With the Wheated Bourbon Icons
Screaming Titan is an excellent choice for fans of wheated expressions like Weller or Maker's Mark who want something craft-driven with unique California character. That framing is useful but undersells what Screaming Titan actually accomplishes. The Weller line from Buffalo Trace is perpetually allocated and virtually impossible to find at retail price. Maker's Mark, while widely available, tops out in complexity at its cask-strength and 46-proof expressions. Screaming Titan enters the conversation at 96 proof with a five-year-minimum age statement, a mash bill with nearly twice the wheat of most competitors, and a production story that gives the buyer something to hold onto beyond the liquid itself.
At $85 MSRP, it is priced where the serious consumer already shops — in the company of bottles like High West Double Rye, Wilderness Trail Wheated Bourbon, and single barrel offerings from mid-major Kentucky producers. The difference is that Screaming Titan carries the novelty and legitimate curiosity value of a California-conditioned product.
The Road Ahead: What Batch 002 and Beyond Signal
The existence of Batch 002 of Screaming Titan is meaningful in itself. The distillery releases limited-edition expressions and explores innovative finishes to create new and exciting flavor profiles, and the Small Lot Series is the vehicle for that ongoing curiosity. But the evolution from Batch 001 to Batch 002 — from the richer, more caramel-forward first release to the lighter, more fruit-expressive second — suggests a blending team actively learning what their California-aged barrels can do as the house stocks deepen.
Driven by a commitment to bold, expressive California whiskey, Redwood Empire has built the largest inventory of aging whiskey in the state. That inventory is the distillery's real long-term asset. As those California-distilled barrels continue to age toward seven, eight, and ten years, the character of Screaming Titan's future batches will shift in ways that more fully reflect the land where the spirit was made. The sourced Indiana and Kentucky barrels provide consistency and depth now; the California barrels are the story that gets more interesting with time.
Beyond its core offerings, the distillery is also open to experimentation. Head Distiller Patz mentioned a barrel finishing program and early brandy distillation of grape, apple, and Asian pear, with plans to finish some of that apple brandy in-house. The Small Lot Series is the natural outlet for that creative energy. Whether a future batch of Screaming Titan incorporates a fruit brandy finish, a wine barrel finish — not unprecedented for a distillery operating in the heart of Sonoma wine country — or simply a longer age statement remains to be seen. The options are plentiful.
The Bottom Line: Why This Bottle Matters
American whiskey drinkers have shown, repeatedly, that they are willing to pay attention to new voices when those voices bring genuine craft and a distinct point of view. Redwood Empire's Screaming Titan Wheated Bourbon is exactly that kind of bottle. It is a rich, smooth, and boldly crafted wheated bourbon that showcases Redwood Empire's innovative small lot approach while embracing the softer, sweeter side of bourbon, inspired by the towering Screaming Titan redwood. The expression delivers a beautifully balanced pour with approachable wheat-driven softness layered against caramel, vanilla, and oak complexity, standing out as Redwood Empire's elegant take on what a distinct California wheated bourbon can be.
The broader implications run further than any single bottle, though. California whiskey producer Redwood Empire has been making an impact both here in the States and in a few countries abroad, and Screaming Titan is the kind of release that earns the kind of press and collector attention that pushes that impact wider. In the ongoing American whiskey conversation about what the next generation of producers can do — beyond Kentucky, beyond Tennessee, beyond the MGP-sourced universe — Redwood Empire is answering with something that has both roots and ambition. For the bourbon drinker who has explored the classics and wants to know what the western edge of the country can produce when given time, grain, and intent, Screaming Titan is a compelling place to start.
