Fortune’s Fool The Prelude Rye Whiskey Review

Fortune’s Fool is a brand founded by Dr. Julie Schmalz, and Indianapolis resident who decided to get into the whiskey business. Rather than get into the immense expense of opening her own distillery, she decided to go the route of contract distillation. While I don’t know the exact date of when this idea was hatched, her Instagram account seems to show that she received a delivery of custom-made barrels from Seguin Moreau in January of 2021. Then the real journey began.

Fortune’s Fool finds a distilling partner with Wilderness Trail

For much of Wilderness Trail’s early years, their business was built upon distilling for other clients as well as filling their own warehouses. Brands like Frank August, Puncher’s Chance and Hard Truth were taking advantage of the fermentation and distillation expertise of Dr. Pat Heist. Julie was recommended to check them out for her brand and ended up buying many barrels. She also had her Seguin Moreau barrels filled with a custom mash bill of 62% rye, 30% corn and 8% malted barley.

To touch on a couple of points about these barrels, Seguin Moreau is chiefly known to produce oak barrels for the wine industry. During the barrel shortage of 2015/2016, traditional bourbon barrel producers were unable to fulfill the demands of the industry at that time. So distilleries got creative and began to source barrels from wherever they could – to include traditional wine cask producers. Seguin Moreau ended up selling more of these barrels than I think anyone knew at the time. We’re just now starting to see some evidence of them popping up, even from distilleries you might least expect it from…

Dr. Schmalz had her newly filled barrels (Light Toast, Char #3 and Toasted Heads) rest in Kentucky at the Wilderness Trail facility for 32 months before bringing on Eboni Major to help her blend her first release. You may remember Eboni’s name from a product she helped create called Bulleit Blender’s Select. That’s still one of the most low-key hits to ever come out of Diageo’s portfolio.

Eboni eventually found the perfect combination of 10 barrels to blend together. Julie decided to name the blend “The Prelude” to showcase that this was only the beginning and that there was more to follow. It was bottled at barrel proof which is 109.6 proof – only .4 proof less than its barrel entry proof of 110. The rye whiskey in the blend was only 32 months old, but all releases staring in 2025 will be a minimum of 4 years old.

Fortune’s Fool loses their distiller after Campari buys Wilderness Trail

In October 2022, Campari purchased a controlling stake in Wilderness Trail. As large corporations are wont to do, they immediately demanded that Wilderness Trail cut off most (or all) of their contract distilling customers from their distillate. This threw a wrench in Dr. Schmalz’s plans and left her scrambling for another source. If her Instagram is any indication, she is now having bourbon and rye whiskey being distilled at Castle & Key Distillery. So while the review for this bottle has nothing to do with Castle & Key, if you do end up finding a bottle from Fortune’s Fool in the future (maybe 2027?), then just know it should be from there instead of Wilderness Trail.

Okay, enough about the backstory. Let’s see how this rye whiskey tastes. I sampled this neat in a glencairn.

Tasting Notes

Nose: Herbal and traditional rye whiskey scents including ginger, lemon, toasted rye bread, mint and oregano. I find a sort of caramel sweetness that rounds out most youthful notes. The oak comes across more like the scent of sawdust. Not overpowering and not fully mature, but a somewhat woody presence. It’s not nearly as bad as it sounds.

Palate: Peppery flavors (both peppercorn and peppermint) combine with herbal notes. I can taste fennel, caraway and rye bread. The mouthfeel is fairly thick which is a plus. Sweetness comes from caramel and malted milk balls. Fruit notes haven’t completely developed, but taste like the fruits you’d find in a cranberry salad. It’s one of the stranger notes I’ve found in a rye whiskey. Each sip has a youthful element to it, but it honestly doesn’t take much away from the experience.

Finish: The finish sees some toasted grain flavors coming to the forefront. Herbal notes like mint and menthol also hang around. Caramel sweetness fades away somewhat quickly. Fruit notes center around unsweetened stone fruits.

Score: 6.9/10

Consider me impressed! The entire time I was drinking this rye, I was looking at the label and the fact it said it was only aged for 32 months. This doesn’t taste nearly that young. There are flavors galore and while I won’t say the youthful flavors were completely absent, they were much less than I was expecting.

This rye is showing great promise for being layered and far more rich than it has any right at being. I would say that this once again justifies Wilderness Trail as one of the more underrated rye whiskey makers in Kentucky and the special barrels she sourced as having a noticeable impact.

Final Thoughts

The Prelude came out in 2023 and its sister blend – “The Overture” (aged 36 months) came out a few months later. But we have to wait until sometime in 2025 to see how this rye will taste with more age. I’m excited because this bottle showed pretty good promise throughout. I’ve also tasted a 7-year-old version of Wilderness Trail rye and thought it was so good that I put it on my Top 10 Most Memorable Whiskies of 2023 list.

I didn’t intend to take so long reviewing this bottle, but by time you read it, all of the bottles have been sold. It was only a blend of 10 barrels after all. But if you see more rye whiskey from Fortune’s Fool in the coming year, I would recommend buying it. It’s one of the better rye whiskies I’ve sipped on at this age and proof and shows some real promise in the future.