Stone fruits | Dark cherry | Graham cracker | Tobacco

Gingerbread cookie | Tobacco leaf | Pie crust | Apricot | Brown sugar | Dark cherry | Seasoned oak | Rich & creamy

Baking spices | Graham cracker | Gingerbread cookie | Dried apricot | Burnt brown sugar | Balanced mix of sweet & savory | Long

Walleye Run is a sister brand to Dragon’s Milk, both of which fall under the growing New Holland Distilling Co. family. While the Dragon’s Milk brand has a specific mashbill and even more specific marketing angle, Walleye Run is meant to encapsulate the feeling of all things Michigan, New Holland’s home state. It also captures a variety of whiskeys, from American single malt to malted rye and bourbon.

Like Walleye Run Whiskey Very Small Batch 2026-01: Fisherman’s Batch, before finishing the whiskey, New Holland blended their 7 year old in-house distilled malted rye whiskey with a 7 year old rye from Journeyman Distillery, which is located about an hour south of Holland in Three Oaks, Michigan. By contrast, Fisherman’s Batch was finished in used brandy barrels, compared to Cigar Batch’s Amburana, Cognac, and sherry cask combination. Additionally, New Holland has tinkered with Cigar Batch blends before with their Walleye Run Cigar Batch 2024-2 and 2025-2 releases, though each of those used Walleye Run’s base distillate only. Possibly due to supply limitations or just the desire to shine a wider light on Michigan distilleries, New Holland has included Journeyman distillate to a significant extent for these most recent releases.

Including Amburana finish is always a risk, and as we saw with New Holland’s earlier Dragon’s Milk Toasted Origin 2023G “Put That in Your Pipe and Smoke It” release, the finishing barrel can be overpowering. In fact, I found the finish in that release to be overwhelmed by the bright, distinctive notes in New Holland’s base whiskey. The Amburana influence is prominent with Cigar Batch, and thankfully, New Holland dials it in to find a nice sweet spot where it adds flavors of gingerbread cookie, graham cracker, and brown sugar but does not dominate. New Holland’s distillate also works incredibly well with Journeyman Distillery’s, coming together seamlessly and still allowing New Holland’s distinct flavor profile to be the star of the show. Walleye Run Whiskey Very Small Batch 2026-02: Cigar Batch is a rich, full-flavored whiskey that combines quintessential “cigar batch” flavors with their own unique flavor profile to satisfying results.