Rabbit Hole Dareringer Straight Bourbon Finished in PX Sherry Casks

The nose is sweet raisins / currents, the initial sip is a wonderful mouth feel sweetness forward the sherry cask shines with flavors of caramel, cherry with a finish that is short but sweet

Check out my video review here Rabbit Hole Dareringer - Whisk(e)y Review 158 https://youtu.be/0pWUuGbFgto .

Rating: 12/23 I just tried Rabbit Hole Cavehill, which took me from moderately optimistic about this to fairly worried about it. The Cavehill was just way too young and boring. The sherry should remedy some of that here - but how much? N: Vibrant, rich sherry with a bit of tannic wood (French oak). There are some spices an a light, grassy, herbal character. Some alcohol comes out, but not as much as in the Cavehill. There's a nice bit of toasty dustiness here leading into a dash of vanilla. Beyond the general sherried red fruit (which has more of an oloroso (lemon, nutty) vibe to it than I'd expected), I get some granny smith apples. It's a solid nose, actually, though I'm worried about the dram's balance with such an unbalanced oloroso character P: Sweet, nutty, tart, spicy, funky. There's a big toasty flavor here with quite a bit of vanilla and also some bitter, tannic wood. This isn't a leathery dram like Joseph Magnus; it's more funky and aggressive like Glenfarclas 105 and Cárn Mór's Cambus 27 (1991). There's some caramel in here, but not a ton. The spices are prickly and also a bit numbing. I get white pepper with some herbal flavors bordering on vegetal. This tastes more like a cocktail than it does like a bourbon. I'm also not certain that tasting this blind I would have guessed that it was a bourbon at its core. F: It gets thinner and a more floral character comes t othe fruit, creating a light sweetness overlaying a light spicy burn with traces of minerals. It's not that great. - Conclusion - I like this better than the Cavehill, but it still rubs me the wrong way. Side by side with Glenfarclas 105, both are obviously young, but this has an extra bite of spicy burn mixed with a thin profile. The Glenfarclas is funkier with more vegetal character, but as a whole product it also makes more sense than this does. It takes a strong bourbon to stand up to these strong sherry flavors, and that just is not a good description of Rabbit Hole. The Cambus is fuller and leans more into the sherry. It's less complex, but possibly knows better what it wants to be. I can hope that air in the bottles mellows out these Rabbit Hole bourbons and makes them a lot better, but I won't be putting money on a big improvement. The sherry is weird and it's sort of like Rabbit Hole tried to use it to add a cherry flavor that many bourbons acquire without finishing. With this being better than the Cavehill, it's going to be at least a 10. I currently have Glenfarclas 105 at a 12, but that seems like it might be a little low. I can see that one going as high as a 14. So this, being between the Cavehill and Glenfarclas 105, could be in the 10-13 range. I'm inclined to say that this is about on par with Buffalo Trace, which I think of as around a 12, but sometimes as an 11 (and rarely as a 13). I'm currently thinking of an 11 or 12 for this. It's funky, but I like the profile here a bit better than in the Cavehil. That painful burn is also substantially reduced. The reduced burn is what takes me up to a 12 here, but it's very borderline.