Grünauer’s Scott Beskow tests Wicket & Peg Bourbon, which is as local as it gets

If you ever wanted to know what it tastes like when you distill corn and oak-age it, this is it,” Scott Beskow tells me, brandishing a handsome bottle of Wicket & Peg Bourbon.

It’s an odd way to describe a liquor, perhaps, but Beskow, Grünauer’s longtime bar manager, isn’t wrong. I tasted Wicket & Peg, the small-batch, Missouri estate–grown craft bourbon, when it launched in January. On its own, I picked up a certain scratchy heat that I normally associated with rye whiskey.

“Honestly, I think they made a mistake by calling it bourbon,” Beskow says. “Not that it’s not — it is a bourbon, technically — but people think ‘bourbon’ and they make false comparisons. They immediately compare it to their favorite bourbon. This drinks nothing like Maker’s Mark, for example. It doesn’t carry the usual bourbon notes.”

The biggest difference for Wicket & Peg, Beskow tells me, is thanks to the mash. For a whiskey to qualify as a bourbon, its mash must be at least 51 percent corn. (Other grains round out the other 49 percent.) Wicket & Peg, on the other hand, is 100 percent corn — Missouri corn.

Wicket & Peg is about as local as it gets. The bourbon is made by Coulter & Payne Farm Distillery in Union, Missouri, which specializes in sustainable-production methods. (Marketing materials proudly proclaim its zero-waste, carbon-neutral process.) So Wicket & Peg uses Missouri corn, Missouri water from the Coulter & Payne farm well — and it’s aged in small batches, in small barrels of Missouri oak sourced from land not 10 miles from the distillery. You want farm-to-bottle? You got it.

Ethan Whitehill, the CEO of Kansas City ad agency Two West, took Wicket & Peg on as a passion project. It’s his branding, after all, that resulted in the playful logo and enticing bottle. While he’s pleased with the sustainability of Wicket & Peg, he says it’s not entirely about that.

“Wicket & Peg is about having fun,” Whitehill says. “We like to say that we play well with others, and it’s bourbon of a different stripe. We’re front porch and backyard. We’re inspired by lawn sports, obviously — that’s where the names come from.”

I don’t know much about croquet, but I know a good drink when I meet one. I trust Beskow to pour me a cocktail demonstrating Wicket & Peg’s merits. He does me one better: He pours me two.

“I think it makes nice cocktails,” Beskow says as he simultaneously builds a Manhattan and an Old Fashioned. “I don’t see myself shooting it. Since it’s 100 percent corn, it’s kind of sweet. I used to go on hikes as a kid, and I remember the smell of corn silos, kind of dusty, sweet and musky. I think people might find that off-putting, but it’s nostalgic for me.”

One of Beskow’s drinks, the Old Fashioned — a modified riff on the classic, he says — embraces that sweetness. Beskow has combined Wicket & Peg with Grade B maple syrup and a host of bitters (Angostura Orange, Fee Bros. Plum and Fee Bros. Old Fashioned) for a cocktail that tempers the heat that I found in a straight pour of the bourbon with flavors of caramel, honey and warm spice.

The other drink, a dry Manhattan with Wicket & Peg, Salers Gentiane Apéritif — a bitter, puckering vermouth — and Angostura bitters, was so searing it could have dehydrated a lake. The difference between these cocktails with such similar ingredients, nearly identical in their amber hues, was disconcerting.

“It’s interesting what the corn does by itself,” Beskow says. “In the dry Manhattan, it fights through, with this dry, cracked-corn profile, but in the sweet one, it has more of a Chex mix, cereal-corn flavor. It’s interesting how it manifests itself, depending on how you make it. I think it’s a great addition to our bar.”

I’ve attached myself to Beskow’s Old Fashioned, and I take another sip, measuring his words. I don’t disagree.

Wicket & Peg Bourbon is available at several local bars, including Grünauer, as well as most area liquor stores. For more on where to find it, see wicketandpeg.com.

WICKET & PEG DRY MANHATTAN

2 ounces Wicket & Peg

1 ounce Salers Gentiane Apérite

3 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir ingredients, strain into chilled martini glass. Garnish with a wide lemon peel.

WICKET & PEG OLD FASHIONED

2 ounces Wicket & Peg

1/2 oz Grade B maple syrup

2 dashes each Angostura Orange, Fee Bros. Plum and Fee Bros. Old Fashioned bitters

Stir ingredients, strain over ice cube into
Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with a wide orange peel. •