Smokewagon Bourbon is a brand that has exploded in popularity for a number of reasons, but one of the most obvious being the quality of the product.  Aaron Chepenik has owned and operated a number of successful bars in the Las Vegas area, and over the years he honed his palate toward fine whiskeys.  Ultimately deciding to launch his own brand, and sourcing product from MGP, Aaron began creating blends that (little would he know at the time) would drive bourbon fans wild.

So what makes this product earn the title Rare & Limited?  It’s rare simply due to the fact that it is eight year MGP bourbon; and limited due to the fact that the entire batch was from a mere eleven barrels.  Eleven.  Yep, that’s limited af!

Without pre-release pomp and circumstance to prime the market for this product it sort of snuck it’s way into the market without fanfare and was sold out before the wider bourbon universe had any idea where it was or how to find it.  We were lucky enough to get our hands on it for review purposes, and if you checked out the video above (it’s long feel free to skip around) you heard our initial thoughts on it.

Speaking to the lack of pretense on this release, when Aaron was discussing Rare & Limited on Weekly Whiskey he had this to say:

It would be kind of cool if when it’s out we have some people trying it and so they can talk about it, and let everybody know if it’s any good.

Aaron Chepenik, Smokewagon Bourbon

So to recap: we’ve got a batch created from eleven barrels of eight year old MGP bourbon that was aged on the fifth floor of the warehouse.  It’s coming in at 118.9 proof without chill filtration.  Let’s dig in!

This is a hell of a pour!  This is nearly everything I imagine when I think of (or want to describe) “good bourbon”.  The profile is classic in all the right ways.  Smokewagon Rare & Limited totally checks the boxes for the bourbon lover.

The rich bouquet to the nose expands nicely in the glass.  One area where a product can always earn (or lose) points on my grading is the mouthfeel–while it doesn’t need to have an exceptionally heavy feel or texture to it–the additional coating of Rare & Limited checks off the additional box elevating it into the “A” range.

I’m happy to have tried this one–and I’ll be keeping an ear to the ground for the second batch of this one.  Thanks for checking this one out with me, I hope you have a chance to try it too!

TheBourbonFinder thanks Smokewagon Bourbon for graciously providing us 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!