Knob Creek Single Barrel Select Rye

Sweet vanilla with some nuttyness on the nose. Spicy on the palate and abpeanut type notr on the back end.

Thompson Select 2023, 8 year 4 month. Not much on the nose, a little heat and light sweet notes. The palate is where the whiskey comes forward with sweet caramel mingles with oak and rye spice. The sweetness lingers well into the finish. This is a very rich KC SiB Rye offering. Surprisingly there was no beam funk to be found.

8 year store pick from Total Wine in Gilbert Arizona (I understand this review might be useless to anyone outside the geographical area) I have had these before but was intrigued by the extra couple years on this one. Nose is very stereotypically rye; white pepper, lemongrass, coriander, rye spice, honey graham cracker, a hint of pumpernickel, and mild oak. Ethanol is not overpowering, but is certainly present. Palate offers some interesting sweeter notes in the form of snickerdoodle cookie, gingerbread, poppyseed muffin along with caraway seed and toasted sesame. Flavors are nice and punchy, with a fair amount of richness but lacking a little complexity maybe. Long finish takes a sharp turn to Spiceville, with tons of pepper, oak, ginger, clove, mint, chili pepper, and cilantro although the herbaceous is pretty low overall. I would have preferred more of an evolution here. Mouthfeel is medium bodied and oily/slick, which really worked to keep the tongue fatigue to a minimum. I was hoping an 8 year store pick would produce pure magic, but instead it produced a…pretty decent rye whiskey. First caresses with sweetness and then pummels you with spice. At $70, I feel it appropriately priced for the market, but not a rebuy for me as I can think of ryes I’d rather pay $10-15 more for.

You can sense the proof and rye to this one. You can really feel it make those nose hairs tingle. On the nose, though, Im getting a vanilla sweetness that is really standing out to me. Im also getting a bit of cherry to it as well. Its almost got like a cherry coke thing going for it. You can really feel the heat with this one. The mouth feel is really nice on this one too. To me its not as sweet on the palate and Im getting more of a cinnamon on the front end here. Through the finish it has a bit of a peppery note and then has a bit of a bitter note that lingers beyond the finish. Not a bad sip, ryes just really arent my cup of tea.

Nice in your face rye at 115 proof. For $40 it gets the job done.