Barrell Bourbon Batch 024
Today I’m reviewing Bourbon Batch 024 from Barrell Craft Spirits. If you caught the Weekly Whiskey episode where Will Schragis (National Director, Barrell Craft Spirits) joined us to chat, you’re one step ahead of the game. Will shared a lot of great information about the brand, and this particular blend. Let’s dig in!
In doing some homework on this batch of straight bourbon whiskeys, we can find that Barrell (as always) is creating this product at cask strength. They also list the States of distillation on the label, which is something we whiskey geeks are always looking for.
Additional info on Barrell Bourbon Batch 024:
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A blend of straight Bourbon Whiskeys
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Distilled and aged in Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana
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Selection of 9, 10, 13, and 15-year-old barrels
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Aged in American white oak barrels
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Bottled in Kentucky
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113.9 proof cask strength bottling
Barrell Bourbon Batch 024 (Photo: Barrell Bourbon)
This release was announced this past summer (June 2020) and is described by Barrell Craft Spirits on their website:
Barrell Bourbon Batch 024 is a marriage of high Rye Bourbons ranging in age from 9 to 15 years old. The 9, 10, and 13-year-old barrels were chosen for their peppery assertiveness, making this “spice box” marriage wonderfully robust yet a little rough around the edges. We refined the blend by adding in citrus forward, lower proof, 15-year-old barrels bit by bit, ensuring that the rye forward base would continue to shine, while delivering a lush mouthfeel.
barrellbourbon.com
Let’s grab a pour of this batch and see how the blending process was here. I recently reviewed Barrell Bourbon Batch 023 as well, which is a somewhat similar blend. Let’s see how Batch 024 goes!
Tasting Notes…
Nose – Soft and sweet. Caramel corn and light butter toffee. There’s a wisp of cinnamon that mixes nicely with oak. Definitely leans toward sweet, even with the oak and spice in there.
Taste – Begins with oak that quickly lets a pecan and sweet caramel roll through. The spice mingles in here nicely and a bunch of vanilla swirls around. Starts oaky, then moves through an array of sweets. Coming back around there’s a drier oak and some spice hits the back palate.
Finish – Long and interesting. This sip begins with oak and ends with oak, but everything between is very interesting and fun. This works out like an oak Oreo…but I guess that doesn’t sound as tasty as it actually is. The sweet butter and nutty caramel fits in there very nicely, and there’s this strong backbone of oak with vanilla that rounds it out. The very end of the finish is slightly tannic, which I dig, but this one could scare off folks that are more oak adverse.
Bourbon Finder Grade: B
Final thoughts…
The “special sauce” (15 year old Kentucky bourbon) that Barrell is using to round out these batches really seems to provide a solid framework for the blend. Both Batch 023 and Batch 024 share a praline, sweet, lightly nutty profile that works very nicely.
TheBourbonFinder thanks Barrell Craft Spirits for graciously providing a sample of their product. Being able to try new things in the whiskey space, without strings attached, is an opportunity we greatly appreciate. Per our review ethos, we provide objective reviews and commentary on media samples of spirits and products; remember, friends, these are the good old days of whiskey!
Our grading system: As mentioned in our About Us page, we’re excited to share bourbon with our friends, family, and readers. There are enough critics, cynics, and curmudgeons in the whiskey world as it is, so our goal is to foster the bourbon community in a positive way by bringing fun and entertaining content whenever possible–as such–we decided that applying precise scores to whiskey was simply too serious for us (and didn’t accurately showcase variability in taste from day to day). We use a simple grade school system to apply a grade to the whiskeys we review because we feel it is indicative of the whiskey’s grade for us on that particular day. A grade of a “B” today may very well be a “B+” or even a “B-” on another day, so rather than focusing on a precise score today that may not stand the test of time, we are just sharing our overall grade of that pour for that one tasting. Pour a bit and enjoy, friends, these are the good old days of whiskey!
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