Joseph Magnus Murray Hill Club Bourbon Whiskey 750ml
Jos. A. Magnus & Co. is a Washington, D.C.-based whiskey house founded to revive the recipes of Joseph Magnus, a distiller whose original spirits were celebrated more than a century ago before Prohibition brought the business to a halt. When the company relaunched the historic Murray Hill Club brand in 2016, it turned to master blender Nancy Fraley, whose background lies in brandy production, to guide the process. Drawing on techniques more common to Cognac and blended Scotch than typical American whiskey, Fraley incorporated a slow reduction to bring the whiskey down to its final bottling strength.
Murray Hill Club Bourbon is a blend built around whiskeys of notably different ages, marrying eighteen-year-old and eleven-year-old bourbon with a nine-year-old light whiskey. The whiskies are sourced from Indiana and brought together using the same blending philosophy Magnus himself once practiced, resulting in a bottling proof in the low hundreds.
The nose opens hot, with caramelized nuts, dried fruit, and toasted sawdust emerging as it settles. On the palate, ripe red apple and cherry lead into a wave of dried caramel and warming spice, while the finish brings brown butter and a light dusting of pepper and toasted oak.