My buddy Danny makes the Kentucky and southern Indiana bourbon run every summer, and this year he timed it around an anniversary I hadn't even heard of until he texted me a photo from the tasting room counter. Starlight Distillery, the Huber family's grain-to-glass operation in Borden, Indiana, turned 25 this year, and on August 1 they opened the doors on two anniversary bottlings sold nowhere but that counter: a 20-Year Reserve Brandy with a Hurricane Katrina survival story attached to it, and a 10-Year Reserve Bourbon bottled at full cask strength. Danny grabbed one of the hundred bottles of the bourbon before the shelf went empty, shipped it down to Jacksonville, and I've been sitting with it for the better part of a week now trying to figure out if it's actually worth the logistics it took to get here. Short answer: yes, though not for the reasons I expected.
Seven Generations, One Farm
The thing that separates Starlight from most of the small-distillery anniversary bottlings flooding the market right now is that this one is genuinely grain-to-glass. The Huber land in southern Indiana has been farmed by the same family for more than 184 years across seven generations, and the corn, rye, and other grains in this bourbon were grown on that same estate rather than trucked in from a commodity supplier. That matters more than marketing copy usually makes it sound — when a distillery controls the field as well as the still, batch-to-batch mash bill variation actually means something instead of being a footnote nobody checks.
The Barrel Did Most of the Talking
This is a three-grain sweet mash bill, fermented for seven days and run through double pot distillation before entering the barrel at a modest 110 proof. The barrels themselves are the real story: Canton cooperage, char level 3–4, built from staves air-dried for two full years with charred heads — a slower, more deliberate cooperage process than most distilleries bother with at this scale. Starlight rested these specific barrels on the southeast side of Warehouse 2, a spot known internally for heat and temperature swings, which is exactly why the proof climbed rather than dropped over ten years in wood. It came out of the barrel, unfiltered, at 120.4 proof cask strength, with a total yield of just 100 bottles.
At full proof this drinks hot up front, as you'd expect — a few drops of water open up the orchard fruit on the nose considerably and tame the char just enough to let the dark honey underneath do more work. Neat, it's a sipper for patient pours, not a cocktail bourbon and not really meant to be one. Ten years is a long time for a barrel resting in a hot corner of a rickhouse, and you can taste every one of them; nothing here feels underdone or thin.
This Isn't Their Only Trophy This Year
If the math on tracking down one of a hundred bottles from an Indiana tasting room doesn't work for you, it's worth knowing Starlight isn't a one-hit distillery riding a single anniversary release. They picked up Double Platinum honors at the 2026 ASCOT Awards for both their Bottled in Bond Single Barrel Bourbon and their Mizunara Reserve — an award only handed out when a judging panel is unanimous. Both of those are considerably easier to find than this 10-year cask strength, and if the tasting notes above sound appealing but the hunt doesn't, start there. The distillery clearly isn't a one-off story; the anniversary bottle is just the hardest chapter of it to get your hands on.
What to Light Up With It
The dark honey and baked stone fruit here want a cigar with some sweetness of its own but enough body not to get run over by 120-proof heat. I paired mine with a Nicaraguan-heavy maduro — something in the Brick House or AJ Fernandez range does the trick — where the cocoa and dark cedar notes track right alongside the bourbon's char and toffee instead of competing with it. Add a splash of water to the pour if the proof is fighting the cigar's spice instead of complementing it.
Look for a full-bodied Nicaraguan maduro with real cocoa depth — it's the right match for anything this dense and oak-driven.
Final Verdict
Starlight's 10-Year Reserve Cask Strength is exactly what an anniversary bottle should be: a distillery pulling its best-resting barrels, being honest about what a hot corner of a rickhouse does to proof over a decade, and not filtering out the character to make it more approachable. It's not flashy, it's not chasing a gimmick finish, and at 100 bottles it's never going to be something most of us stumble into by accident. But if you've got a friend making the Bourbon Trail run, or you're willing to plan a trip to Borden, Indiana around it yourself, this is worth the extra effort — and if you can't get the 10-year, their more widely available Bottled in Bond and Mizunara Reserve bottlings prove this isn't a one-release distillery. I'll be asking Danny to route through Indiana again next August.