To be transparent, I didn’t know anything about Kooper Family Whiskey until I was asked to review two of their whiskeys, one being the Sweetheart of the Rodeo Straight Bourbon, a non-chill filtered 4 year old straight bourbon sourced from Indiana and aged in Ledbetter, Texas. Whiskey is all about learning and exploration, so I’m always excited to learn something new. Also, the Texas climate (with Kooper Family located about 60 miles east of Austin), introduces weather unique from Kentucky or Indiana that could affect the barrel aging process and impact the end bourbon, also potentially interesting.
Kooper Family Whiskey was founded in 2012, but only started sourcing unaged white dog in 2015. Their website provides a lot of detail, so it’s worth reading. For now at least, it appears that their whiskeys are only sold within Texas. Anyways, Kooper Family Whiskey is taking an interesting hybrid sourcing, aging, and blending approach that’s part Barrell Craft Spirits and part start-up craft distillery. They source unaged spirit to age in Texas, as well as source aged whiskey to ultimately blend together into whatever they choose. That said, I believe that Sweetheart of the Rodeo is completely aged in Texas from sourced white dog from MGP. That’s all good background to know, but let’s find out about the result of all that work in this Kooper Family Sweetheart of the Rodeo Bourbon review.
Thank you to Troy Kooper from Kooper Family Whiskey for providing this bottle with no strings attached. All opinions are still my own.