For me judging rye whiskey is a challenge. Rye isn't my preferred style of whiskey up front. I find the heavy spice generally to be off putting and "one notey". Rye fanatics would obviously vehemently disagree with my assessment, but thats generally been where I land. Diving into Few Rye Whiskey today, and apparently its won a few medals, including Whiskey Advocate's "Craft Whiskey of the Year" award so I'm despite my reservations I'm excited to give this a try. Unexpected pickle note coming through first thing on the nose. The city I grew up in was home to a heinz pickle factory and the nose on this brings me back memories of driving past the pickle plant during the summer smelling the dill permeating the air. Freshly cut lumber also makes an apperance. I'm being told I should find caramel and brown sugar on the nose, but I'm struggling to pick those notes out currently. I catch small hints of caramel being back there at times, but the note is incredibly fleeting. The taste of this is something special, this may change my opinions on rye alltogether. The rye spice hits you as expected the moment it hits your palate, but it quickly dissapates into a butter cream and caramel note through the middle. The oak notes are all still there but not overpowering. Adding water doesn't actually do much here. All the notes just have the volume turned down a bit and I feel it was better at 46% abv. I'm overall pretty pleased with this one, I could see myself picking up another bottle to have on hand for the rare occasions I feel like drinking a rye...then again, I rarely ever really feel like drinking rye.