Taking the Reins from Nancy Fraley
Joseph A. Magnus has been tied pretty closely to Nancy Fraley since the brand was revived in 2015, especially once Cigar Blend became one of the better-known finished American whiskeys on the market. Nancy is stepping back now, though not disappearing, and Will Fabry is taking on more of the blending and creative work that she helped establish.
Will didn’t come into whiskey through distilling school or a family background in the business. He spent about fifteen years in professional kitchens before moving into spirits, a lesser-traveled path but one that inevitably comes up in the context of blending (not as often as people coming in from wine or beer backgrounds, though). I’m always interested in transitions, so I asked what skills translated and which didn’t: in a kitchen, you can taste something, decide it needs acid or salt, make the correction, and know whether you were right a few minutes later. Whiskey is less accommodating. Will talked repeatedly about patience being one of the hardest things Nancy taught him, whether that meant letting a new blend settle in tank, revisiting a finishing cask over months, or simply learning not to decide too quickly what a barrel was capable of.
That apprenticeship has been pretty literal. Nancy has given him exercises where he had to recreate blends she made, traveled with him through Cognac, and introduced him to the sensory and maturation techniques she picked up through her own mentors. Frequent or return listeners will remember Amanda Beckwith of Virginia Distilling Company, another Nancy Fraley mentee, talking about the same skills and experiences. Will even got to taste from one of the surviving vials of the original pre-Prohibition Magnus whiskey, the bottle that helped inspire the modern revival. Nancy is apparently down to the second of two vials now, so I’m going to assume pours are not generous - Will only got to taste it once it was clear he was assuming the new duties.
Learning to Leave the Whiskey Alone
The trip to France seems to have left the biggest mark on how Will thinks about maturation. They were there after distillation season, so instead of spending the trip around stills they spent more time in cellars, including tasting brandy aged in wet and dry environments. Will came home, went into the Magnus cellar, and promptly turned on a humidifier.
The cellar in Michigan now sits around 72% humidity, with a much narrower temperature swing than you would see in many Kentucky rickhouses. Will describes the effect of that humidity almost like adding butter to a sauce, giving the whiskey more oil and texture without forcing maturation along quite as aggressively.
As an aside, my guess is that approach helps explain why I enjoyed the new Joseph Magnus 10 Year Cask Strength Rye as much as I did. It’s 95/5 MGP rye, and I’ve had enough 95/5 rye at this stage that I usually know where it’s going before it gets there. This didn’t quite behave that way. The herbal and peppery backbone is still recognizable, but the whiskey is softer and rounder than I expected, especially at 113.44 proof. It does indeed taste and feel like there’s some butter added to an acidic sauce.
I’ve said a few times lately that I’m getting a little MGP’d out. That isn’t a knock on the whiskey. There is just an enormous amount of it on the market, often presented without much done beyond selecting a few good barrels. Will’s rye felt different enough that I stopped thinking first about where it had been distilled and started thinking about what Magnus had done with it.
The rye is also Will’s clearest solo release so far. He has no intention of tearing apart the established Joseph Magnus Bourbon, Murray Hill Club, or Cigar Blend profiles simply because he has more control now. Those whiskeys have an identity he spent years learning alongside Nancy. The newer projects are where his own preferences have more room to show.
Cigar Blend, Murray Hill, and Knowing When to Stop
Coming back to Cigar Blend after a few years away was a useful reminder of why it became such a reference bottle for finished bourbon.
There are plenty of “cigar blends” now, some closer to the older brandy tradition than others. Magnus was the first to apply that style to American whiskey in 2015-16, and it has rightly been seen as Nancy’s greatest calling card. One detail I hadn’t fully understood before this interview is how small each Cigar Blend batch actually is. Magnus may build a larger mother blend first, but each numbered batch ultimately comes from a single Armagnac finishing cask, with around thirteen of them filled in each round of mother batching. So yes, the people hunting specific batch numbers really are chasing individual cask variation. Anyone trying to collect every batch has chosen a very ambitious hobby.
Will starts checking those casks early and pays much closer attention once they reach five or six months of secondary maturation. There is no fixed timetable because season, cellar position, and the individual cask all change the pace. He is trying to catch them when the finish has become part of the whiskey without becoming the only thing you can taste.
Murray Hill Club has become more of an outlet for playing around. Recent releases have included a Calvados finish and a combination of white Port and Michigan ice-wine casks, the latter including casks that still contained lees. Will thought the Calvados batch may actually have gone about two weeks longer than ideal, which I honestly appreciated hearing. You learn more from “I think I could have pulled that sooner” than from another claim that every batch came out precisely as envisioned, especially once you’re into the triple digits.
He also has no plans for amburana. We managed to agree on that without needing further discussion. #nomoreamburana.
Murray Hill uses a small amount of light whiskey alongside older bourbon. Will admitted that light whiskey took him some time to appreciate, but he now uses it for the texture, perceived sweetness, and slightly odd character it can add in very small quantities. They may use only half a barrel to a barrel of light whiskey against fifteen or sixteen bourbon barrels, usually after the bourbon portion has already been blended and allowed to rest.
There are other pieces of the Magnus inventory waiting for their turn too, including roughly 700 to 800 barrels distilled during the brand’s years in Washington, D.C. Will has begun tasting through those and expects they may eventually become a separate project rather than simply disappearing into one of the existing labels.
The revived private-barrel program came from a similar bit of inventory digging. Will found a group of roughly ten-year-old high-rye bourbons made in Seguin Moreau barrels with heavy toast and lighter char that didn’t taste quite like the rest of the stock. Instead of blending that individuality away, he pushed to bottle them as single barrels.
That seems to be where Will is heading as he takes on more of Magnus: not trying to create a hard break from Nancy’s work, but getting comfortable enough with what she taught him to know when he can leave the established whiskeys alone and when he has something worth taking in another direction.
He was also clear that Nancy stepping back does not mean the mentorship is over. His idea of carrying the job forward includes eventually finding someone else to teach, the same way Nancy taught him and Hubert Germain-Robin taught her. There are at least eight generations of distilling and blending heritage passed down from master to apprentice, and Will is the latest in that chain.
Joseph A. Magnus
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