WhistlePig Boss Hog Review

This week’s review is one of my favorite rye whiskeys and a contender for my favorite cask strength rye. Like the standard WhitlePig Rye, Boss Hog is a 100% rye sourced from Alberta Distillers in Calgary then shipped to WhistlePig Farm in Vermont where it is finished in bourbon barrels and then bottled at cask strength. That last bit has been the source of controversy around WhistlePig as many whiskey geeks believe they are deceiving customers into thinking they make their own whiskey due to the prominence of Vermont on the label. That topic could be the subject of an entirely separate post but if you want Master Distiller Dave Pickerell’s side of the story you can listen to the excellent Whiskycast interview where Dave says it was the government that told them to first add then remove “Product of Canada” from their labels. In light of that it doesn’t really seem like WhistlePig is one of the bad guys in the Non-Distiller-Producer whiskey world which will hopefully keep their reputation respectable until their own distilled products start coming of age. Anyway, enough about the drama around the brand and let’s get on to their whiskey.

Aged 12 3/4 years; Barrel 19; 67.4% ABV; $160 (including tax)

The nose is what you would expect from a 12 year cask strength rye: sweet wood, spice, and a blast of alcohol. On the taste the heat mellows out, the spicy rye notes tone down a notch, and a deeply rich sweetness comes into play. The spice is still there but it has great nuance and depth to it. You can tell years in the wood have really given this one some character as it’s not the in-your-face spice blast of a younger cask strength rye like Thomas H. Handy. It’s considerably woodier and way more dry than something like Handy but that should be expected since it’s over twice as old and also double barreled.

Thoughts: Overall, Boss Hog is a great rye whiskey. It’s a big bruiser so you’ll have to be a fan of high proof offerings to appreciate it. There aren’t many options in the 12 year cask strength rye category so this one gets lots of uniqueness points. On the negative side I would note that it might be a touch too dry oak heavy and of course we still have the biggest turnoff: the price. At $160 a year ago it was hard to pull the trigger but even worse the last release has gone up to around the $180 mark. I enjoyed this bottle a lot but unless the price comes down to around the $100 mark I’m going to passing on these in the future regardless of how many cool looking war pigs they put on the cork.

Rating: A-