Knob Creek Single Barrel (Bourbon Pursuit – Man of Few Words)
Knob Creek barrel selects can offer a pretty wide range of ages, flavors, and values. We don’t see many of them in the Northeast, so when the chance to pick up a 13 year KC SiB pick comes around–and it’s selected by the folks from the Bourbon Pursuit Podcast–we don’t delay in scooping up a bottle or three.
In the interest of transparency, I should mention that (typically) we aren’t huge Knob Creek fans. Well, I should say, we weren’t big Knob Creek fans. We’ve heard plenty of outstanding reports about store picks and barrel picks done by groups, but have yet to experience once until now.
As always we look into the distiller’s information to see what they have to say about the product. From the Knob Creek website:
When Booker Noe created Knob Creek®, he revived full-flavored, pre-prohibition style bourbon. Each bottle stands as a hard-earned piece of bourbon history. And each barrel? Well, each one is a story all its own, uniquely influenced by nature, time and its individual journey.
That’s why Knob Creek® Single Barrel Reserve remains Knob Creek®’s purest expression of old style flavor. Each bottle remains unblended, highlighting the singular characteristics of our finest hand-selected barrels.
What bourbon doesn’t come with a nice backstory, right? We like knowing the history when applicable, so this is nice. It’s also nice knowing that the Bourbon Pursuit backstory as well. This particular barrel came from the third floor of Warehouse W, rack TT, on tier three, the lot ID is05J13 and it was sporting barrel number 7776A. This is a thirteen year, 120 proof bottle, and there were 126 bottles that came from the barrel.
Tasting Notes…
Nose – Some oak and spice come up and let you know this is a full bodied Knob Creek. There’s enthanol but it’s not overpowering or astringent. Sweet peanuty caramel comes forward. There’s…chocolate? A bit of milk chocolate is mixing in there.
Taste – Vanilla and caramel mix together nicely with spice and trail off into a big sweet caramel peanut candy dipped in chocolate. A nice mouthfeel. This all blends nicely with balanced oak. This is like a liquid candy bar.
Finish – A solid hug. Long finish that keeps the candy bar rolling as it slowly shows off it’s depth. This isn’t the most complex juice, but wow is it balanced.
Bourbon Finder Grade: A-
Final thoughts…
Delicious? Check. Barrel pick? Check. FOMO? Oh yes! If you’re a fan of Knob Creek products at all, this one is not to be missed. A true once-in-a-lifetime bourbon, but without all the waiting in lines or raffle entries. Buy them while you can…or we may scoop them all up for ourselves.
Remember this is a single barrel product, when it’s gone…it’s gone! Get yours from the only place who has it: Keg N Bottle
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. Our goal is to foster the bourbon community in a positive way by bringing fun and entertaining content whenever possible, and as such we decided early on that applying precise scores to whiskey was simply too serious for us. We use a simple grade school system to apply a grade to the whiskeys we review because 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. Pour a bit and enjoy, these are the good old days of whiskey!
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