It’s rare that I receive three review bottles in the same week that are all winners. I rarely write about whiskeys I don’t enjoy, because taste is personal, and I imagine readers would rather I use my allocated pixels for things I actually recommend.
But last week was a very good week with three new products that I greatly enjoyed. Two of them I was predisposed to like because they were from producers that have a fantastic track record. The third was new to me — and I imagine it will be to you — so read on to find out about some new treasures.
The first is a perennial favorite for me, the latest release in George Dickel’s acclaimed Bottled in Bond series of Tennessee whiskeys. Their fifth iteration of the 100-proof whiskey was distilled in the spring of 2011 and aged for a dozen years in Tullahoma rickhouses. All that time in oak contributed a dark amber color to the spirit, almost like maple syrup.
The nose exhibits sweet and nutty marzipan notes along with a whiff of oranges, maybe orange blossoms. It’s quite delightful! The first sip reveals more of those intriguing citrus notes along with buttery cornbread and a smoky, oaky, almost savory character. The long finish loses the sweetness in favor of roasted nuts and slightly bitter tannins. Like I find in many older Dickel products, there is that hint of tannic cedar at the end of the finish, but I quite enjoyed the transition from sweet to bitter in every sip. At a suggested retail price of $44.95 for a 100-proof bottle that is this old, George Dickel Bottled in Bond continues to be a steal and should be available in most spirits stores now.
Next up is the latest offering from the master blenders at Barrell Craft Spirits. Known for selecting some of the best barrels of whiskey from distilleries across the country and combining them to create entirely new products, Barrell has also demonstrated extreme talent with their novel finishing methods.
For this release, they have sourced wood from one of the rarest and most precious barrels in the world, mizunara oak from Japan. It's more porous than the American or European traditionally used in barrel making, and only the most skilled coopers can craft barrels out of the wood. Japanese distilleries have been aging whiskey in mizunara for more than half a century, but even they use it in less than 10 percent of their production because the wood is so rare and expensive. Because the tree tends to be gnarled and twisty, very few of them can be used, and some have to grow for more than a century to produce enough straight wood to use for barrels.
Barrell has managed to find enough barrels to age a blend of bourbons from Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee of different ages for an additional year and a half in mizunara. This complicated process has contributed some remarkable flavors to what could have been a mishmash of whiskeys aged between 8 and 14 years.
The derived mash bill of the blend is a high-corn spirit with 76 percent corn, 20 percent rye and 4 percent malted barley. It has a lovely copper-penny color in the glass and a delightful nose that reveals tropical aromas like vanilla, orange and toasted coconut. It’s surprisingly light on the tongue, but the heat of the 116.42 proof does show up quickly.
The finish stretches on for quite a while with those tropical dark cocoa and coconut flavors eventually giving way to more traditional vanilla and caramel notes. Compared to the cinnamon bomb of Brazilian amburana wood barrels I’ve sampled lately, I vastly prefer this mizunara effort. At a suggested retail price of $89.99, Barrell Craft's Cask Finish Series: Mizunara is indeed a rare treat worth seeking out.
The surprise of the week was a whiskey from a relatively new distillery, High n’ Wicked. The company was founded by two former senior executives of Brown-Forman who have plans to source whiskeys, even internationally perhaps, and blend them to create new expressions. The first offering from them that I sampled was their Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, sourced from at least one distillery in the state using a 36-inch column still from Vendome.
While the company doesn’t reveal the exact source (I’m guessing New Riff since they make the High n’ Wicked Rye), they are maintaining transparency about the recipe and age of the whiskey, aged at least five years and made up of 51 percent corn, 39 percent rye and 10 percent malted barley. That’s notable because 51 percent represents the absolute minimum that a whiskey can contain and still be called bourbon, so this is a particularly high rye content for a bourbon, and it shows off nicely.
The company brags that they use Kentucky-grown corn and rye and that their lack of chill filtration may mean that there could be a little cloudiness in the whiskey. There wasn’t any in my bottle, and the skipping of this extra step is said to preserve some of the more nuanced flavors in a spirit.
They definitely left plenty of flavors in their bourbon, because the nose was pleasantly unusual without the expected caramel and vanilla notes of many younger whiskeys. Instead, High n’ Wicked has already achieved rich oaky aromas along with leather and tobacco that you’d normally expect in a much older whiskey.
Bottled at a robust 104 proof, the whiskey has extracted plenty of oak while still letting the fruit and spice of the high rye content sing through. I tasted toffee and white pepper along with some of the baking spices that genuine rye whiskeys present, but still enough sweetness from the corn to identify it as a bourbon. As the base of a Manhattan, this is a spectacular choice, and considering its premium price at about $80 a bottle, you might consider using it in cocktails to help stretch out that precious bottle.
Either way, High n’ Wicked is a welcome addition to the Kentucky bourbon canon and to my home liquor shelf. Well, actually, my home liquor room.
