Barrell Craft Spirits Gray Label Bourbon 15 Year (2018 Release)

This is one of the best I have ever had. This is what bourbon should taste like. The nose is a gentle Salted Nut Roll in the pocket of your brand new leather jacket. The palate is sweet and satisfying, brown butter spice cake, white pepper, toffee and leather all unfold on you tongue. The finish is medium long, with some nice spice on a foundation of oak and umami. This is near perfect. It isn't as complex as I prefer out of a top shelf dram, but it stays in its wheel house and does what it does perfectly.

I’ve done regrettable things a plenty. This seemed like a setup but my spoiler alert is that I am honestly pleased with going for broke and causing my wife to further question my (in)sanity. This is NOT Fred Minnick’s WLW bearing bottle. No, for better or worse this 105 proof bottle is batch 2 (2019/2020) of Barrell 15y blend. There may be some batch 1 still out there and I’ll probably never know if it’s better, worse or the same. With my dad on the back porch for my birthday, cool night and a fire pit. Pandemic. Election year. RBG died today. Nose from a neck pour is flat, oddly flat at first. No nuts, no spice, no sweetness. Then vitamins. Then faint leather and earth. Raisins. Andes mints? A few floral notes. Wet oak and fall leaves. More funk, more vitamins, slight sweet antifreeze. Odd. Sweet tobacco and minerals Batman! The MGP multi-phase plate is there, as are the mineral/Flinstones Dickel flavors. Sweet up front with a clove spice tingle and then a mid-palate earthiness and powdered sugar sweetness with fading heat and a viscous coating like buttered bread that turns into a lasting tobacco varnish. Candy corn, clove and cedar for days... Three pieces of advice my father gave me tonight. 1) Learn to let as much roll as you can, especially with the kids. 2) Enjoy your kids, we all know they grow up too fast. 3) Don’t take anything I say as advice too seriously. Does this qualify as inception?? At some point I’ll shell out for a pour of WLW but in this moment I feel no need to do so. In this moment I am at last satisfied. For now. ————— So, perhaps I was caught up in the moment. This is not a 5.0 pour. But I also don’t think it’s bad by any stretch. Maybe a little overpriced. As I’ve worked this over for the past year it has retained a thicker texture with a nice balance of musty sweetness, dried fruits, minerals and… nuts. The oak, likely thanks to the TN component, doesn’t hit you like hot, dry splinters as one would expect from a KY 15 year. For some the replacement of astringent oak with roasted chestnuts might actually be a win. I feel like it avoids being too edgy to a fault though. Dropping to a 4.5 but could go as low as 4.0 or 4.25 based on the price and the fact that I like ECBP B520 better for 1/4 the cost.

Nose: A lot of old oakiness (think of the smell of sanding an old piece of oak wood, dried fruits like a fig with a molasses sweetness too. Some vanilla creeps in but has that old whiskey smell that I love! Palette: A dried fruit sweetness like a candied fruit or even a raisin-like taste is quickly overcome by old oak spices, like cinnamon or clove that has been in the spice rack/drawer for a while. Finish: Is long and lingering with more oakiness but a nice sweet cherry candy appears if you retrohale as you finish it. It stays on the palette just like some older bottles of whiskey I've had does. All in all an amazing bottle!