Four Gate Batch 6 The Kelvin Collaboration II

Waxy pineapple nose. Tropical pinesol and plastic. Mild oak and milk chocolate. Best feature is a long finish. Glad I didn't buy a bottle.

Tons of spice, some coconut.

Neat. Sample. Initial impression is that the finish is dominating this nose. Rum and cognac have equal footing. Rum is making this very sweet, hint of almond paste. Cognac is adding this grape undertone. Getting a low of powdered sugar, powder sugar in fried dough. Hint of milk chocolate. The nose is a bit fainter and even a bit hotter than I was expecting. Mouthfeel is viscous and syrupy. Initially I am getting a lot of root beer, very very sweet. Root beer again mid palate with a heavy blast of vanilla. The finish is all cognac, a faint concentrated ice wine. Subsequent sips I am getting more of this milk chocolate emerging in the front end and again on the finish. Huh. I like this less than I was expecting. I was expecting to be blown away due to my love of cognac finish, rum finish, and Four Gate. It’s delicious root beer, but that’s essentially it. I find tangents but I have to really look for them. I’m kinda relieved that I got a sample of this. Lovely taste but too expensive for a whole bottle.

So word on the street is 12 year old bourbon, but they listed 11 year on batch 1, no mention here so I'm skeptical. For those unaware this is independent bottling (sourced) with specialty cask finishing done. No real details on where they got the bourbon, but I'd guess kentucky bourbon. Nose - Sweet, buttery, distinct alcohol kick, chocolately, caramel, and just rich sweetness. XO casks are playing a very distinct role here. A huge amount of brown sugar as well. Taste - Rich sugary and dark. Toffee, spices, oak, rich brown sugar that's been in a sauce pan with butter. The finish is more favor as you get that XO thing, I can't put my finger on it. It's that oak and just aged wine/beer like thing where umami type notes come out. I'm a self proclaimed XO fan boy, but I can't say that this is better than the first batch. A great complement to the first one and while here I think the XO casks are a bit more over powering than the sherry casks, and that's not a good thing there. Then again maybe these bourbon casks needed to be over shadowed? I can't speak to the original flavors of the bourbons here. I'm going with a very solid 3.25 and I'm saving the right to bump this up to a 3.5. A good bourbon with good casks, but for the 200 price point it is a rough sell. I kinda wish they'd found some older casks that had started to get over oaked and then used the XO casks to balance them back out. edit - bumped this to 3.5. It opened up nicely after about 45 minutes in the glass and got super sweet and a bit more bourbon forward. Yeah this is really good, but again not exceptional. But saving the option to go back if this opens up more.