Since its first release in 2013, High West’s A Midwinter Night’s Dram has paved the way for cask-finished American whiskey. That first release—labeled “Act 1,” with most subsequent acts dropping at an annual cadence—took the brand’s already-famous Rendezvous Rye and finished it in a combination of French oak and port barrels. The resulting whiskey was rich and heavily spiced, preserving the underlying rye character and layering on decadent red fruits.
It didn’t take long for A Midwinter Night’s Dram (often shortened to “MWND”) to make the leap from cult favorite to mainstream darling. Indeed, even occasional whiskey drinkers began seeking out bottles around the holidays, shortly after the latest versions hit liquor store shelves.
But as with most things in spirits, flavor—and blend components—never truly stands still. As High West’s Rendezvous Rye changed, so too did MWND. The company eventually ran out of its oldest sourced rye, and the age range of blend components changed, from 5 to 19 years to the current spread of 4 to 10 years.
And while earlier MWND releases featured 100% sourced whiskey, today, High West incorporates some of their in-house distillate into the blend. Recent Rendezvous Rye blends—still the base for MWND—feature straight rye whiskeys between 4 and 10 years old. Some come from Indiana’s Ross & Squibb distillery with a 95% rye mash bill. The rest is High West’s 80% rye, 20% malted rye mash.
Similarly, the finishing casks have evolved. Today, MWND is finished entirely in a combination of Ruby and Tawny Port barrels. The sources of those casks may have also shifted, but as with many brands, High West keeps that information pretty close to the chest. In 2022, High West released an additional MWND expression dubbed “Encore,” which featured rye finished in white port barrels. (It’s unclear when or if the brand intends on bringing back Encore.)
In October 2025, High West announced its latest in the MWND series: Act 13. As with all such releases, it’s bottled at 49.3% ABV (or 98.6 proof), and today carries a suggested retail price of $149.99.
So how does it taste? We got an early sample of Act 13 and also tasted it heads-up against its immediate predecessor, 2024’s Act 12.
On the nose, Act 13 is perhaps a touch flatter compared to recent batches, a hunch that’s confirmed once I taste it side-by-side with Act 12. There are the normal hallmarks of MWND—rye spice and red fruit, for starters, in addition to mint jelly and cracked black pepper but they seem a bit restrained, as if notes started at a volume of eight and got dialed down to six. Act 13 features a bit more cedarwood and pine than some previous batches, which fans of herbal, wood-forward ryes might love. As far as aromas go, the latest version is missing a bit of the special alchemy of herbal rye and luscious fruit this expression became famous for. However, Act 13 does seem to feature a bit more in both the cinnamon and cocoa departments—so if you lean toward those scents, there may be more to grab you here.
A first sip of Act 13 is certainly sweet, like room-temperature, sugar-sweetened tea. Fruit and spice both fold in after a couple more tastes, and as the nose suggested, this year’s batch is particularly biased toward cinnamon. Robust berry flavor has long (always?) been a hallmark of this expression, and it’s certainly not absent here; indeed, it’s probably best described as ripe mulberry. That black tea component never lets up but does get a little more complex with time, which lends some welcome tannins to the mix. Traditional rye spice and mint build gradually toward the midpalate, along with dried cocoa.
Comparatively, Act 12 features a slightly bolder array of fruit, specifically a Cherry Heering quality that really captivated me last year. There’s a lot more of that jammy holiday fruit and clove-forward spice, though admittedly Act 13 brings more cinnamon through and throughout. Flavors for this latest batch seem overall less intense, and indeed, my perception was of a whiskey that actually drank a bit below its 98.6 proof.
The finish on Act 13 gives a pop of sweet cherry candy, some clove oil, and a hit of pumpernickel rye bread before a mid-length finish.
A Midwinter Night’s Dram Act 13 brings familiar flavors, with amped-up baking spice, pine, and cocoa. It does dial back on some of the rich red fruit that so often enthralls me; for that reason, I’d rank last year’s batch a tick ahead.
It’s always an imperfect experiment to compare a freshly-opened bottle with one that was uncorked 10 or 11 months ago, so take my comparison with a grain of salt. That said, half the fun of seeking out these annual releases is comparing and contrasting. Of course, that necessitates keeping at least some of a bottle around through an entire year. Hence why I normally hunt for backups.