Tastes

I’ve heard people say you cant go wrong with 4 roses single barrel. But, as a single barrel product this does very. The bottle I have here is proof of this. This barrel is quite bad. nose - vanilla, carmel and astringency Palate - vanilla, bitter, drying, astringent, tannic, Finish - peppercorn. short, dry, bitter I was reluctant to try another bottle of this since my first bottle was so bad, but i love MGP and New Riff high rye bourbon, so i did eventually buy a replacement. Thankfully, the new bottle is much better and has more traditional sweet corn, rye and caramel notes.

Tasting Batch 1 from Spring '22. This is good stuff. In a blind you'd be convinced this was from Kentucky. I get rich caramel, vanilla, cherry, butterscotch, cocoa, barrel, and a little nuttiness. Profile wise I think this is similar to wild turkey 101, but maybe with slightly more butterscotch and dark cherry, and less nuttiness and citrus. Which makes sense because I believe the mash bills are similar (based on what they told me at the distillery). The only problem here is the price, but I guess that it is probably priced appropriately for the current market and considering they've basically started their releases with a 6 year product. If you guys are in the Kansas City are, go tour the distillery. The grounds have beautiful rolling hills, limestone wells (discovered by Lewis and Clark), a cave (for their upcoming double oaked products) and brick and wood rick houses, just like the big boys in KY. They'll let you dip your finger in the fermenting tanks and have a sip of white dog. The people there are awesome. I feel lucky and thrilled that this place is in my backyard. I've got a single barrel barrel proof offering I'll need to review another day, but right now just happy to be sipping on this.

Wow. Christmas Cinnabon Oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins Oatmeal raisin cookie Exotic wood Gingerbread house finish, slight tannic Strong nose, rich flavor, strong finish. Barely a hint of the base bourbon underneath. You continue to smell and taste this for a long time. Very unique and difficult to fully describe. Wow

Nuttiness of raw peanuts. Bonus points for price, easy to drink and great proof to mix with. The total package

Barrel 17131 58.75% abv Really grainy from start to end. Sweet and fruity, like strawberry and blueberry. Lots of butterscotch-ey flavor. Long finish that is mainly just hot and spicy. Overall this is ok considering it is only 3 years old. Sweet and fruity, but also young. Value is ok

On the nose I get hit by a nuttiness but not peanut. More like a hazelnut or walnut. Buttery. Burnt butter. Cranberry? or is that because we just had thanksgiving dinner recently? This is way less fruity and desserts compared to Stranahan’s. More savory/herbal. A little stone fruit but not shouting at me. I get some smoke throughout that I feel is a signature of Union horse distillery. I get this on their other releases in particular the four grain and it’s probably my favorite part of the experience. Ultimately, I feel like Union horse products are heading toward Balcones territory but are less sweet and fruity but also less acrid and bitter, yet still rich and flavorful. Which makes them much easier to drink in my opinion. This is good, not great, to me. But it’s also very unique. I think if you dig Balcones you’d dig Union Horse.

This smells good, banana walnut bread, maple candy, some hay, maybe something like school glue. Taste is ok, get a lot of spicy oak and medicinal cherry. Finish is where this really falls flat for me. Becomes just bitter cherry/walnut and does not make me want to come back to it. Revisiting this, it just begins to taste like straight cough medicine. I tend to judge my bourbon by how often I reach for it, and this one took a long time to work through. Lots of other bottles I’d rather have.

I found this to be a very middle of the road bottle. Nothing bad about it but nothing to write home about. It’s got a little bit of a heaven hill nuttiness to it. I get a little spice, some oak. For $25 this is a fair value, but I think the problem is that this doesn’t really differentiate itself from Heaven hill products that are an even better value and have similar taste.

This single barrel was bottled at 108 proof and a little over 5 years old. I did not like this bottle. It had just very very little flavor, and what was there was just, meh, at best. The only positive things I can say about it is that it drank way under the proof, and it was very inexpensive.

This particular bottle is 113 proof and presumed 5ish yrs old (bottled in early 2017, purchased mid 2022). I purchased an Ezra distillers collection pick at the same time and while that bottle was utterly awful, this one I find enjoyable. A find a little peanut, sweet cornbread, strawberry and cinnamon. Easy sipper and great value