HOME BASE SINGLE MALT
Batch 9 (2024)MASH BILL – 100% malted barley grown and malted at Mecca Grade Estate Malt in Madras, OR
PROOF – 92
AGE – 7 years 1 month in ex-Home Base Bourbon casks
DISTILLERY – Home Base Spirits
PRICE – $92
HOME BASE BOURBON
Bitter No.2 Barrel Finished, selected by Cask (2024)MASH BILL – 60% organic yellow dent corn, 30% malted barley, and 10% malted wheat
PROOF – 118
AGE – 4+ years with 3 to 10 months of barrel finishing
DISTILLERY – Home Base Spirits
PRICE – $86
HOME BASE WHISKEY
100% Merced Rye Whiskey (2024)MASH BILL – 100% Merced rye grown in Zamora, CA
PROOF – 123.4
AGE – 4 years 8 months in ex-Home Base Bourbon barrels
DISTILLERY – Home Base Spirits
PRICE – $92
At this point, I’ve reiterated my longstanding interest in Home Base Spirits here on The Right Spirit blog quite a number of times, from my 2019 interview with founders Ali and Sam Blatteis, through a number of posts on their flagship bourbon, cask strength bourbon, single malt, and various store picks and one-off experiments. Over the years, this tiny but mighty distillery run by twin sisters in Berkeley, California, has only grown more interesting release by release.
In the wake of my Year of No Buying I very quickly picked up three new whiskeys from Home Base. During that year of abstinence from spending, I found myself uncorking my bunkered bottles with less strategy and more abandon. Before that year I’d likely have opened these three Home Base releases in succession, waiting for the last pour of one before uncorking the next. But each of these I uncorked very soon after getting them home. Given the significant differences between them, I thought they’d make a fantastic Home Base Spirits intro-flight, offering insight into the distillery’s breadth of output and penchant for experimentation.
It’s that last bit, experimentation, that’s helped me understand one aspect of my fandom for Home Base. Their commitment to a D.I.Y. approach, and that they’ve kept their operation small and containable, reminds me of my own D.I.Y. theater years. Producing small scale theater on the fringe is very hands-on in a similar way. You can’t make big money off it, and often just hope to pay your bills. So it takes a significant amount of genuine love and passion to fuel your efforts. That love and passion weave their way inextricably into the work itself. Each individual effort is carefully tended from start to finish.
As my theater career expanded, I certainly enjoyed not having to do all the jobs and scraping together meager resources and carrying equipment across town on public transit. But over time I did miss the independence, the D.I.Y. spirit of can-do, and that very particular satisfaction that comes from eventually sitting back and enjoying something you made with your own bare hands, from your own deeply personal intentions, convictions, and dreams. Home Base Spirits reminds me of this.
So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll taste through each of these whiskeys in turn, going in order of ascending proof and using traditional Glencairns. Then I’ll do a bit of side-by-siding, reflect on the range and nuances between the whiskeys, and hopefully articulate why you might give the brand a go if you haven’t already. Mind you, Home Base hasn’t paid me to promote them. I just like what they do and why they do it.
To kick things off, here we are with the Single Malt Batch 9. It’s the oldest of their Single Malt releases to date. Batch 1 came out in July 2021, aged 3 years 6 months. It had a silky texture, with notes like butter, cream, and apricot pie. The Single Malt line was off to a good start. The next batch I tried was #5, released in August 2022 and aged 5 years 7 months. This batch was drier—straw, soft malt, nutty barley, ginger, green tea, grapefruit peel, dried and candied lemon peel. Whereas Batch 1 came across like early spring, Batch 5 was very late summer.
Now with Batch 9, released in February 2024, we’re at a lucky 7 years. It’s two weeks since uncorking and I’m a handful of pours into the bottle.
COLOR – a range of honey ambers
NOSE – fresh Douglas fir pine, honey on fresh bread, cream, malt
TASTE – ginger, honey, molasses, dark seedy bread, darker Douglas fir, malt, bitterness from the malt and oak
FINISH – malt, ginger, the bitterness, a nice tingly warmth
OVERALL – a sunny cool day in late autumn
Batch 9 brings my sense memories back to Batch 5, only we’re now deeper into those cooler, darker months of autumn. There is a sunny coziness to this single malt, with the rustic textures of leaves turning their vibrant colors just before falling, and the earth’s rich aromas rising in the season’s damp air. I’m intrigued by how each batch of the Home Base Single Malt I’ve tried has conjured distinct seasons for me. Certain notes carry over from batch to batch. But as the whiskeys age they move through time in strong cadence with the earth’s pungent cycle of bloom and decay. I can’t wait to experience what a 10-year release brings!
Second up, a wheated bourbon aged 4 years, and finished for 3 to 10 more months in used Home Base Bitter No.2 barrels.
This I came across accidentally. A one-off experiment taken as a store pick by San Francisco’s Cask on Third, it wasn’t advertised by Home Base on their social meds. Cask sold most of it to their whiskey club members, and put the remaining bottles out on the shelf. When I saw it sitting there, the shiny gold sticker and dark glass caught my eye. The age is comparable to their recent flagship bourbon releases. However, the finishing in barrels formerly used for Home Base’s Bitter Batch No.2, a digestif style amaro made with figs, apricots and cherries, was an intriguing prospect. How might the fruity and bitter amaro impact that standard Home Base northern California orchard of a bourbon?
It’s now just over a week after uncorking and I’m three pours into the bottle.
COLOR – deep saturated oranges
NOSE – fermenting fruits, small wild red berries, honey, lemon peel, malt, cream cheese, fresh spring herbs in clean water, faint dried maple syrup, woven thatch
TASTE – very like the nose, with flavors and textures like a wild berry sauce or jam spread on breakfast breads with fresh butter
FINISH – follows on from the taste, only a notch darker and with a peppery plume that quickly fades to a numbing warmth; also the herbs from the nose kick up again
OVERALL – fruity and sweet in a distinctly Nordic breakfasty way
This takes me immediately back to a wonderful breakfast spread my partner and I enjoyed at a hotel in Tampere, Finland. We couldn’t get enough of the seeded croissants with real fresh butter and rustic berry jams. The essence of the Home Base flagship bourbon is there in the bread, thatch, and malt notes. But these are thoroughly doused by the influence of the Bitter No.2 cask finishing. I can imagine a very simple cocktail made from this—pour 2 ounces in a shaker with ice, shake until chilled, strain into a chilled coupe and garnish with a lemon twist. Easy. I’ll have to try it.
And finally, another Home Base one-off, their 100% Merced Rye Whiskey. This is only the second release under the Home Base “Whiskey” label. The first was a 2019 cask strength single barrel of 100% Red Flint Corn Whiskey. Aged a quick 2 years 6 months and bottled at 123.2 proof, that first release burst with the unwieldy but impressive brashness of youth. At once drying and mouthwateringly succulent, it paired rich caramel notes with grilled herbed corn on the cob. Naturally I was very curious what this first Home Base foray into rye grain would bring. I was also intrigued that for their first rye release they’d chosen to create not a proper American rye, but a single grain whiskey in the scotch tradition, aged in used bourbon barrels.
It’s now just over six weeks after uncorking and I’m four pours into the bottle.
COLOR – rich burnt-buttery ambers
NOSE – very dry up front, with seedy rye bread and rye crackers, a thin spread of fresh butter, bayleaf, then come faint raspberry and strawberry jams
TASTE – a creamy texture, with dominant drying rye seed and rye grass notes, and a slight metallic bitterness to it
FINISH – a plume of richer flavors akin to those on the taste, with a malty bitterness, leaving a numbing peppery warmth
OVERALL – flavorful without being particularly complex, ultimately dissatisfying rather than compelling
This is an odd one. When I first tried it several weeks ago, it immediately reminded me of some of the early, younger, rougher Home Base releases, when the ages of their whiskeys were measured in months. Over time I found that Home Base whiskeys tend to kick in for me around the 3-year mark, and that by 4 years they’re on a very good roll. This Merced Rye Whiskey is beyond 4 years, heading toward 5. But having been aged in a used rather than new barrel, it lacks the same level of flavor impact from the oak. Though I respect the experiment, I’m very curious what the results would have been had a new charred barrel been used. In its current form the whiskey feels to me under-developed and rough. The high proof seems to shove the limited range of flavors forward, for example, rather than supporting them.
Nosing through all three whiskeys side by side, I notice their complimentary herbal nature. Home Base whiskeys all share a kind of rustic wildness to them from release to release, tilting brighter or darker, fruitier or breadier. Ali and Sam Blatteis have stated their goal to create uniquely Northern California flavor profiles, and as a NorCal boy born and raised, I can say they succeed.
Tasting through them again in quick succession, they are united by a distinct autumnal quality. In the Single Malt it leans creamier. In the Bitter No.2 Bourbon it leans fruitier. In the Merced Rye Whiskey it leans drier. But together these three releases make a journey in and around autumn’s colors, textures, aromas and tastes.
I’m going to thoroughly enjoy making my way through the Single Malt Batch 9 and Bitter No.2 Bourbon. They each have a lot to offer. The Merced Rye Whiskey will be more challenging. I’ll put it to the test in cocktails, with added water, etcetera, and we’ll see how it evolves. But so far it’s not at the level of other Home Base achievements.
And that’s okay. Because I’m with them for the journey. I could understand someone wondering why—in a post encouraging people to try Home Base Spirits—why would I include a whiskey I don’t entirely care for? Easy:
Home Base has demonstrated time and again their integrity, their daring, and their practical ability to craft unique and very good whiskeys. Naturally not every experiment, nor even every batch of the tried and true, is going to work out. Same goes for the biggest, oldest Kentucky operations. But overall, Home Base whiskeys are dependable comfort food, born of the NorCal agricultural climate, with its famous range of fresh produce that goes into all the creative breads and sauces and salads and spiced meat rubs and innumerable other culinary delights that have come out of this region.
So cheers to terroir. Cheers to place. And cheers to creative D.I.Y. daring-do! Go get some Home Base for your home shelf.
The Right Spirit 