Tennessee Archives - First Pour Cocktails

Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Barrel Proof

Posted on March 18, 2023March 13, 2023 by Nick

While there’s debate about Jack Daniel’s designation as bourbon, there’s no denying amongst the bourbon community that Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Barrel Proof tends to be fantastic. Similar to Wild Turkey Rare Breed, this offering appeals to both high proof hunters and those looking for an amped up flavor experience compared to their normal day to day bottle. Unlike Rare Breed, which comes in at 116.8 proof, Jack Daniel’s Barrel Proof comes in between 125 and a whopping 140 proof. With all that proof, can you even taste the whiskey?

Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Barrel Proof

Rick #: L-20
Barrel #: 21-07548
Bottled Date: 8-23-21
Proof: 132.4 (66.2%)
Secondary Acronym: JDSBBP / JDSiBBP

Sight: A rich mahogany.

Smell: Spicy caramel and toasted oak start things off, while a bit of heat always seems to flirt around the edges. Brown sugar and maple roll around. Hits of cedar, cherries, banana, and caramelized stone fruits join in. Baking spices and yeasty notes pile in.

Sip: Unsurprisingly, it’s warm, but not burning. The evaporative qualities come quickly, but they give off beautiful notes of cigar, walnut wood, maple, cherries, and spice. So much spice. There’s a pile of cloves and dark chocolate powder. Toasted nuts and creamy pastry get involved. The flavors are deep, complicated, heavily skewed into desserts, wood, and spice. Make no mistake, the heat is always around the edges.

Savor: The ending leaves a prickly finish that slowly dissipates into a mix of spice, dried cherries, and hardwood. The finish lingers with a good amount of tannin.

Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Barrel Proof is spicy, chocolate, and complicated. While it is hot, the flavor profile is exceedingly complex and layered. More importantly, the flavors are discernable through the heat, and allow it to be sipped (if slowly). While this isn’t a starter bottle, it’s an amazing choice if you’re a fan of barrel proofers.

In Cocktails

In a Manhattan it’s unsurprisingly massive. The woody notes come through with lots of walnut, but also dark chocolate and almond. Spice joins in and barrels through with lots of caramel, maple, toffee nuts, and nougat. There’s amazing notes of dried banana, preserved cherry, and intense tobacco / cigar. There’s a spice blend and dark tea going on as well. The flavor profile is incredibly bombastic. The heaviness of the Manhattan makes it feel rich. Overall, this is a delicious Manhattan.

In Review – Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Barrel Proof

Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Barrel Proof is simply fantastic at $65. For the price point it delivers incredibly massive flavors neat, and then explodes with more in cocktails. Interestingly, this is not the first bottle of JDSBBP that I’ve had and felt this way about. While visiting the Cleveland Cavaliers last year, I had an opportunity to enjoy a different bottle, which was equally exquisite, with more maple, banana bread, banana’s foster, caramelized walnut notes. This is to say that you can expect typical single barrel variation, but that the quality remains high.

While this isn’t a bottle to start your bar with, it is an amazing choice as an expansion bottle for a relatively available barrel proof offering. Absolutely give it a try if you get a chance.

Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7

Posted on March 8, 2023February 20, 2023 by Nick

r/Bourbon loves to get locked into a existential argument when the topic of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 comes up. While Jack Daniel’s is a whiskey, it isn’t bourbon mostly because of an extra step (they actually meet all the criteria to technically be bourbon), charcoal mellowing. Once distilled, their whiskey is passed through maple charcoal for roughly 3-5 days. This process imparts additional flavors that Jack suggests are similar to a couple years in the barrel. Regardless of if this is true, they do have a loyal following, and it’s almost ubiquitously available the world over. So what’s it taste like?

Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7

Filtration – Maple Charcoal Filtered at distillation
Age – No Age Statement (N.A.S.)
Proof – 80 (40% A.B.V.)

Sight: Amontillado Sherry to Deep Copper

Smell: The nose is soft with a nice amount of cinnamon, smokey wood, and vanilla. There’s a nice amount of caramelized sugar, Christmas spiced orange, and maple wood mixing in the nose as well. Beneath all of it is a little minerality.

Sip: The mouthfeel is light to moderate. Notes of charcoal, maple, wood, orange marmalade, and caramel come forward. The light mouthfeel leaves a bit of minerality and spice. A slightly fruity, almost cantaloupe or honeydew note occurs.

Savor: The ending has a slightly green wood and spice note.

Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 is light, slightly spicy, and decently mixed between sweet and earthy notes. There are nice occasional bumps of fruit. All those things combine to make a relatively pedestrian sipper that won’t really inspire much interest beyond mindless sipping.

In Cocktails

In a Manhattan there’s a lot of sweetness present from the caramel and vanilla notes. There’s a good amount of oak and maple (wood) going on here, with a slight amount of bitterness. Fruit is sort of present, but perhaps it’s more so the vermouth. The ending picks up the minerality. The flavor is distinctly a Manhattan, but with middling weight and relatively one note flavor.

In Review – Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7

Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 is a thoroughly average feeling whiskey. The flavor is pleasant if earthy and slightly more sweets forward. There’s nothing particularly deep here, but it also manages to avoid the overlap and cliché profiles of the broader bourbon market. If you like these flavors, then they deliver clearly in spades. Overall, the price point and availability place this right in the correct spot if you find you prefer Tennessee Whiskey to Kentucky Bourbon.

George Dickel Rye Whiskey

Posted on January 27, 2023January 15, 2023 by Nick

When someone told me that George Dickel Rye Whiskey was an amazing rye at $20, I was skeptical. I bold this, because most people associate Dickel with a particular flavor of minerality that is occasionally construed as ‘Flintstone’s Vitamins’. This doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you’d want in a Fancy Free or Manhattan. Yet, somehow, amazingly, George Dickel Rye became one of my breakout bottles of 2022, and possibly became the top rye we’d recommend for your bar.

George Dickel Rye Whiskey

Distilled in Lawrenceburg, Indiana at 95% Rye – 5% Malted Barley, George Dickel Rye Whiskey is an MGP product. It does however go through a charcoal mellowing process where it’s filtered through maple charcoal to finish it. The specifics of where the aging actually occurs is fairly vague, however it is aged in a char #4 barrel with a #2 head. The proof is 90 (45% A.B.V.)

Sight: Amber

Smell: Vanilla, minerality, and dill jump out from the start. There are notes like fresh plums and carrot juice. There’s a bit of caramel going on here as well and maybe some orange marmalade.

Sip: The palate is light with honeyed sweet, vanilla, and dill coming right out. There are pleasant notes of spice, oak, and tobacco. The palate isn’t incredibly complex, but it is warm and inviting in it’s spicing and has a telltale minerality and orange chalk candy note.

Savor: The ending pulls in more dill, vanilla, and a good amount of minerality. It lingers gently.

George Dickel Rye Whiskey is tasty if a little straightforward for drinking on it’s own. The flavors have a minerality that compliments the vanilla and dill characteristics. The other notes are more fleeting but not unpleasant. Overall, it’s tasty, but not the more in depth rye ever.

In Cocktails

George Dickel Rye Whiskey plays well in a Manhattan adding it’s vanilla and herbal notes with a bit of spice. The sweetness also works well with the fruitiness in the vermouth. The finish is spiced, honeyed, and with a little bit of minerality. Overall, it’s a decent Manhattan that won’t have anyone writing home about it. Combine this with the love it or hate it reputation of Dickel, and it’s a polarizing a choice if it’s the only rye in your bar.

It’s worth talking about the amazing depth that it adds in the right context. Where more brown sugar forward ryes don’t pop in the Fancy Free, Dickel is positively eye opening. The minerality, herbal notes, and spice burst beautifully with the orange and maraschino. Again, this is a particular application, so we don’t recommend this as an indicator of versatility.

In Review – George Dickel Rye Whiskey

George Dickel Rye Whiskey is a wonderful choice of rye whiskey with a characteristically Dickel slant. The Dickel characteristic is really the tipping point of the value of this. If you find you like charcoal mellowed whiskies, this could make for an amazing bar addition, and a rye we absolutely recommend you try once. If you’re not a fan of those flavors, this might be a struggle even at $20. All that said, we recommend you at least try it and consider stocking your bar with it.

Blue Note Uncut Single Barrel – r/bourbon “Supper Club”

Posted on August 26, 2022August 12, 2022 by Nick

When I first began trying to find new bourbons to try, I found myself reading reviews on many websites. While reviewers palates vary, you can generally find alignment if you try a few liquors or beverages and compare notes. This works because reviewers are relatively static, but what about a hivemind like Reddit’s r/bourbon? Well things become trickier, as you have a mix of reviewers sharing opinions on the same bottles. Yet, there are few things they agree on as much as the positive reviews for t8ke’s single barrel picks. And as luck would have it, the first lottery I ever won was for a chance to buy a bottle of Blue Note Uncut Single Barrel – r/bourbon “Supper Club”

Blue Note Uncut Single Barrel – r/bourbon “Supper Club”

The particular barrel chosen has the following statistics and tasting notes:

Aged: 4 Years
ABV: 118.5pf
Bottle Count: 145
Price: $52 (before shipping)
Tasting Notes: Pound cake, citrus, maple, orange rind, a big root beer note, confectioners sugar and butter cream. Syrupy vanilla bean and butterscotch, long citrus and maple finish. Back on that Old Fashioned in a bottle vibe that I got from our first Blue Note (barrel #15036) and I’m here for it. Reminds me of a night at the supper club here in the Midwest.

Below are my tasting notes:

Sight: Amontillado Sherry to Copper.

Smell: Toasted sugar, maple, and pound cake come out. There’s a strong smack of alcohol top note here that keeps flitting in and out. There are notes such as sarsaparilla, toffee, hazelnut, and game meat or smokey leather. Fruit notes are pretty sparse, leaning slightly toward candied orange or white grape.

Sip: The palate is moderate in weight, leaning thick as it sits. Heat starts building quickly, and the edges can get rough. Toasted sugar and cake are present with hits of oak, smoke, root beer. There are some tobacco notes here has well, with just a hint of burnt marshmallow, and a touch of caramelizing green banana towards the transition to the finish.

Savor: The ending maintains that heat and pulls in more notes of roasted pecan, slight pastry, and again, a cola or root beer like note.

Blue Note Uncut Single Barrel – r/bourbon “Supper Club” is complex enough to keep revisiting, but not quite well put together enough to be enjoyable. The palate is hot and the flavors are a bit inconsistent from sip to sip. Given the price point, I want to be wowed, or at least impressed. Instead, it feels young, partially developed, and not quite smooth enough. It feels out of its depth.

In Cocktails

In a Manhattan Blue Note Uncut Single Barrel – r/bourbon “Supper Club” doesn’t quite work as expected. There’s a lot of weight added, which makes for a nice solid Manhattan. Vanilla bean and maple candy mix with an herbal-woodsy note and sweetness that immediately shifts dry on the finish. The herbaceous notes are nowhere in the general palate of just the whiskey. There’s also an interesting smokiness that presents on the finish. Overall, it’s an interesting, if non-traditional Manhattan.

In Review – Blue Note Uncut Single Barrel – r/bourbon “Supper Club”

Reviewing Blue Note Uncut Single Barrel – r/bourbon “Supper Club” is a bit of an exercise in futility. With the extremely limited availability, you’ll never see it. Given it’s a single barrel, it’s subject to all the variation that happens from barrel to barrel. Combine this with the fact that it’s a surviving barrel from a tornado strike, and we’ll it just isn’t representative. So why spend the time?

The fact is that limit availability bottles like this are good ways to peak behind the curtain of different distilleries, and to get an idea of the stock they’re working with. They can serve as potential guideposts when trying to evaluate either a single barrel selector (such as r/bourbon) or the brand (Blue Note). Ultimately, the challenge here is a mix of exclusivity and cost. These picks are not uncommon in many states, and retail for something closer to $40. After exclusivity mark up and shipping, this bottle ended up at $65.

That $20+ is a big jump, and brings this bottle into competition with things like 1792 Full Proof, Maker’s Mark Wood Finish Series and Private Selections, Russell Reserve Store Picks, and more. Those are some big competitors, and Juke Joint’s age and complexity just doesn’t feel like it has the depth to hang here.

Barrell Seagrass

Posted on February 25, 2022February 15, 2022 by Nick

Barrell Seagrass was one of those polarizing whiskeys that made a lot of noise from reviewers over the past year. Consistently ranking highly, this Rye Whiskey is finished in Martinique Rum, Madeira, and Apricot Brandy Barrels for a one of a kind flavor. The result of this finishing is a character nothing quite like the rye whiskeys most people are used to. People have ranged from gushing to confused as a result, but most admit that it’s more of a flavor choice and price point than any actual defect with the whiskey.

Professional whiskey enthusiast Fred Minnick agreed, naming one of Barrell Seagrass’ one of his top 2 American whiskey of 2021. As result, Barrell Seagrass has been flying off the shelves, so it is worth the chase?

Barrell Seagrass

Barrell Seagrass is a blend of American (distilled in KY, IN, and TN) and Canadian rye whiskeys. These sourced whiskeys are then finished in the Martinique rum, Madeira, and apricot brandy barrels before being blended to make the distinctive flavor of Barrell Seagrass. As a result, proof varies between batches. This batch comes in at 118.58 proof.

Sight: Deep copper

Smell: Apricot and bubblegum come floating out with a good waft of heat. The apricot is sort of malleable, giving way to an apricot compote with a spiced note. Grassy notes with a touch of mint come in. The nose fringes into candy, almost like gummy bears laced with elderflower. The nose is very perfumed.

Sip: The palate is smooth and slightly sweet. The flavor of candied and dried apricot starts things off, before opening into spiced oak notes and a touch of grass. There’s a bittersweet almond and cocoa note that hints at the fringe. Grapefruit and elderflower come toward the tail and leave the ending with a floral character.

Savor: The ending brings in a wet stone, fresh rain on wood notes, and laces with grassy element, nuts and spices. The finish continues on with touches of unripe apricots and grapefruit pith.

Barrell Seagrass is distinct and unique thanks to the finishing process. The flavors are very well layered and balance between sweet, floral, and earthy. Apricot standouts out here, giving a perfumed character that runs all the way through the whiskey. The floral and nutty notes, combined with citrus makes for an exciting mix of flavors that keeps each sip evolving. Martinique rum also lends the earthy and funky flavors that make it hard to pin down what flavor is leading. Overall, the finishing job is tremendous, and it’s excitingly well done.

In Cocktails

In a Manhattan, the apricot sweetness comes through front and center. It mingles with the grassy rhum notes and slightly minty rye notes to vibe with the herbal notes in the vermouth. The juicy red berry and caramelized notes of the vermouth bring an additional level of fruitiness. Finally a crazy floral streak runs right through the middle to brighten and perfume the whole drink. Spice and apricot round things out for a long finish. Overall, it’s a wild Manhattan, but probably not the best use of a high end finished rye.

In Review – Barrell Seagrass

Barrell Seagrass is priced at $80 – $90. The price is undoubtedly high, but the quality of the product matches in this case. From a cocktail enthusiast’s perspective, Barrell Seagrass offers an opportunity to make supercharged, superstar unique cocktails – but the price is prohibitive to experiment with. For standard classic cocktails, you’ll want to go with something more traditional like Wild Turkey Rare Breed Rye or Pikesville, or even Rittenhouse. However, none of those will be anywhere near the unique sipping experience that Barrell Seagrass offers. This is a must try (and perhaps a try before you buy for a full bottle.)