Stellum Bourbon

Sweet but dry enough to balance. Honey, vanilla with a decent burn

👀Pale gold 🤥 Vanilla cinnamon caramel! Chewy Orange. Nutty oak. 👅raw honey, rye spice, caramel apple, citrus with a little black pepper. MGP forward. 🧠light and airy pecan Smokey 🏅 great solid blending for $55 3 Indiana,1 Kentucky, 1Tennessee. 5-6 year base 4-14 also added. This is a buy!

Nose features vanilla bean, caramel-dipped green apple, milk chocolate, cinnamon, oak, and rye spice. Barrel char note becomes more prevalent as it sits. Certainly inviting enough. Subdued ethanol given the proof. Palate opens with toasted marshmallow, oak, and barrel char, before hitting some cashew/pistachio nuttiness in the mid-palate. Flavors are round and layered. Finish barely long enough to be called medium, with chocolate, ginger, cinnamon, pepper, oak, and some undefined fruits. Mouthfeel is neither thick nor thin, fitting the flavor profile well. You can certainly tell the blenders at Barrell know what they are doing as the flavors here are well presented. I’m a little vexed by this one because the first half of the bottle was SO rounded that few individual flavors stood out which had the net effect of coming off as slightly boring. But a funny thing happened on the way to the review; (I review bottles at the half way point) it opened up and started to shine. So hard to rank. Didn’t particularly care for the first half of the bottle; but enjoying where it’s at now and looking forward to the final third of the bottle. Overall I’m leaning toward that this is a little too rounded/integrated for my tastes, as I prefer bolder flavors. At $58 and 114 proof, there’s no way I feel ripped off and this is perfectly enjoyable but will probably spend my future $58 on whiskeys I enjoy a little more.

Flavorful but a little too alcoholic

Full flavor that drinks like a 90 proofer