Wilderness Trail Distillery, based in Danville, Kentucky, has released two limited-edition whiskeys to mark co-founders Dr. Pat Heist and Shane Baker’s induction into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame’s 24th annual class.
Heist and Baker built the actual distillery from scratch in 2012, starting with a single 250-gallon pot still capable of producing about a barrel a day.
Unlike a lot of newer brands that source whiskey while their own stock matures, Wilderness Trail distilled everything on-site from the very beginning, using barrels they filled themselves rather than buying aged juice from elsewhere.
The headline release, Symphony of Disruption, is a 10-year wheated Kentucky bourbon made from just three barrels, bottled at 122.9 proof. Alongside it is an 8-Year-Old Cask Strength Kentucky Rye Whiskey, selected by National Brand Ambassador Haley Perros and the distillery team, bottled at 116.1 proof.
Both go well beyond what the distillery normally puts out. Wilderness Trail’s core lineup — a wheated bourbon, a high-rye bourbon, and a rye whiskey — is built entirely around Bottled in Bond status: single distilling season, minimum four years aged, bottled at exactly 100 proof.
Heist and Baker also built the distillery around sweet mash fermentation instead of the sour mash process most Kentucky distilleries use, a technique they’d already spent over a decade advising other distilleries on before opening their own. Both new releases blow past those usual house rules — older, higher proof, and distillery-exclusive.
Campari owns the majority, but the founders still run the show
Wilderness Trail sold a 70% stake to Campari back in 2022 for $420 million, with the Italian spirits giant valuing the whole company at $600 million and holding an option to buy the remaining 30% in 2031. That’s a real change in ownership, and a significant one for a distillery that started in 2012 with a single still.
Four years in, though, Baker and Heist are still the ones being individually recognized by the industry, and this release makes that distinction explicit.
Symphony of Disruption isn’t framed as a Campari product; it’s framed as a career-capping tribute to two guys who spent years as fermentation consultants before building their own distillery from scratch, made from three specific barrels they picked themselves.
A distillery exclusive limited-run isn’t exactly the kind of release a corporate parent prioritizes, even if it is from a distillery whose whole core already sits among the best bottled-in-bond whiskeys on the market.
It’s a useful reminder that acquisition doesn’t automatically mean the founders disappear from the story. Wilderness Trail is still telling its own history through its whiskey, though Campari’s money surely isn’t hurting.
Where to buy it
Symphony of Disruption 10-Year-Old Wheated Bourbon ($189.99) and the 8-Year-Old Cask Strength Kentucky Rye Whiskey ($79.99) are available now, exclusively at the Wilderness Trail Distillery Visitor Center in Danville, Kentucky, while supplies last.
