Frey Ranch Straight Bourbon

Sweet with a brown sugar spice at the end. Surprisingly good.

Smells terrible. But man it tastes good!

Distinct pool water smell on the nose with a good smooth whiskey taste with little bite and a nice finish

Strong candied cherry and sweet flavor. #adventcalendar

Peanut, green apple, and a little fingernail-polish remover on the nose. Not much sweetness on the palate, especially for a bourbon. Fairly thin. Some rye spice on the back end. This does not pass the better-than-12-dollar-bourbon test, Evan Williams BiB is better. I was expecting a lot more from this. Pretty disappointing. Thankfully, this was just a sample, as I won't be a buyer.

Nose: fruity and light. A little spice. Very makers mark-ish. Palate: light and spicy. Some mint initially too. A little hot for 90 proof. Finish: short and sweet. Kind of like the end of a stick of juicy fruit. Overall: not bad at all. Id be down to try the cask strength or eventually if they have a product with a decent age on it (12+ years) id buy!

N: Cherry cola, peanut butter, saw dust. Quite a bit of ethanol with a paint thinner vibe to it, unfortunately. To be fair, I hadn't noticed that while casually drinking this, only while trying to nose for review. Moving on: menthol tobacco, caramel, vanilla, red jam. Ethanol seems to be settling down, now a few minutes into the glass (but it's not gone). Cinnamon, baking spice, and ginger cookie. Lots happening. P: Peanut butter pecan pie with a cup of coffee. Red berry and cherry. Whole wheat bread, slightly toasted. Toffee bread pudding with cinnamon apple. Stewed orchard fruit with brown sugar. Finish brings in what you expect from bourbon: caramel and vanilla. There's a bit of oak bitterness. More peanut butter and pie crust. Dash of medium dark chocolate. Little bit of heat, but this is really a dessert dram. Most of the whiskey I drink is just casual drinking. I'm usually doing something else - chatting with a friend, watching something, reading something, working, whatever... I'm smelling and tasting it, but I'm definitely not sticking my nose repeatedly in the glass until I can't get a new scent and I'm not holding the whiskey on the tongue and focusing hard on what I'm experiencing, trying to pull apart every taste and feeling. Every now and then I come across a whiskey that I really love casually drinking, but find it a little (or sometimes a lot) lacking when I do sit down to drink to review. This whiskey has that problem, possibly more than any I've had. Pour this and forget about it and you get a real treat of a dessert whiskey - it's all pie and sweets, yet never cloying, just the right amount of spice. But diving in for the review, that ethanol note hurts. It's rough. It did fade, at least, but it hits in the score. I think this is a situation where this is a young distillery selling a relatively young bourbon. There's room for growth and maturity here. Will be interesting to watch over the next decade or so and see what Frey Ranch can produce. The other possible problem with this whiskey is the price. At $50, I'm not sure it's competitive. There are plenty of bourbons priced lower that are a step or two better, but they are also more traditional. This is comparable to the Balcones entry-level bourbon (similar flavors with a dessert feel), but that one costs half as much. The cost here, I assume, comes from the presumably high cost of doing grain to bottle on one farm. The bottle gives its mash bill as 66.6% non-GMO corn, 10% winter wheat, 10% winter rye, and 12% 2-row barley, which is malted on-site. Non-GMO corn is not cheap. Malting on-site is not cheap. So I get it, you pay for hand-crafted quality. (Springbank's prices are possibly/probably justified for the same reason.) But the problem is the juice doesn't quite reflect that yet. I think it certainly can though and I will buy again to see how this might develop. Final note: how much does this bottle weigh? It feels like a liter bottle. Maybe shave a little off the glass usage and you could shave a few bucks off the price. it is nice looking and feeling though. The brand is on point. _______ A bunch of regular Distiller reviewers are chatting spirits in real time on Discord. Please join: https://discord.gg/4nfePCdyKM. (If the link is expired, post a comment and I can get a new one.)