Hotel Tango Ready-To-Drink Triangle/Trail Inn SP

To have two different single barrel selections, within one calendar year, picked by the same person, varying THIS much in quality… That’s what they call a “feature”, not a “bug.” It’s what makes this fun. The last single barrel pick I had was genuinely awful. Little-to-no redeeming qualities. Leagues worse than the “standard issue.” This one rivals some of the best red-wine finished bourbons on the market, and in many cases, it’s much cheaper. “2 Year Wheated Bourbon finished in red wine barrels for 9 months.” (RWB #002). Little known fact, when you put more zeros in front of the batch number, it increases the quality of your whiskey by up to 36%. Nose is cherries, syrup, grapes, vanilla. Oranges. Great nose. Body is almonds, more cherries. Grape juice. Bit of sugar. Finish burns… hits deep in the chest. The juiciness is there. Very dry. Brine. Salt. I feel this finish more than I taste it, but if I had to pick a flavor I’d say more cherry here. This is a great red wine finish. It’s hot, and it’s a bit too hard hitting on the backend. But it’s encouraging to me that they were able to make something this good. It’s every bit as good as Jefferson’s Pritchard’s Hill, and I hope to see more finished bourbons from HT in the future!

I was kind of surprised I never reviewed this, as I’ve been nursing it for at least two years. Not good, y’all. And that pains me to say, because I respect this distillery. Nose is faint caramel. Not much to write home about. I think I can smell the glass itself about as much as I can smell the juice. Body is peanuts, sugar, salt, brine. Really salty. Finish is… baking spices? Yeast. This is lackluster in every possible way. I prefer the main line by a lot, which is never the way a store pick is supposed to go. I think they did a decent job making it drinkable as a 2-year product when compared to some young whiskeys, but that’s the only praise I can think of here. Miss all around. Side note: the legs on this drink look like I coated my glass with rain-x. I’ve never seen a whiskey do that before.