Michter's Toasted Barrel Finish Bourbon (2014 Release) Review

Michter’s Toasted Barrel finish is a “limited release” Bourbon that hit the shelves last Fall and is set to have a second release coming again this year. This product starts out the same as their standard US*1 Kentucky Straight Bourbon with aging as normal in fresh charred oak barrels. Once that aging is complete it is dumped into fresh oak barrels that have been toasted rather than charred. The whole process sounds rather expensive and frankly I’m surprised Michter’s isn’t charging more for this product. Barrel finishing can have fantastic results as can be seen with releases like High West’s Midwinter Night’s Dram but it requires a high degree of finesse to improve upon the original whiskey without ruining the underlying character. Let’s see if Michter’s is up to the challenging task.

No Age Statement; 45.7% ABV; Batch 14I542; $50

Nose: Pretty standard vanilla, caramel, and honey sweets with some burnt ripe fruits like pears. Not getting much extra wood or smoke influence in the nose but overall it’s pretty nice.

Taste: Upfront it is very soft and mostly all the same sweets from the nose. Nothing memorable in the mouthfeel department as it is somewhere between thin and medium viscosity. Towards the back of the palate there is some light spicy zip and a bitter smokiness dominates. You can really taste the toasted oak influence on the finish as it tastes like dry, smoked oak. Not charred oak mind you but oak that’s been heavily dried out. Overall the taste has a lot of young influence to it. Even though the toasting process covers up some of those notes, the new-make flavors of fresh corn mash are still noticeable as if they haven’t been smoothed out by enough time in the original charred barrel.

Thoughts: This bottle has been open for almost a year now and there is reason it’s taken me this long to go through it. I just don’t think it’s that good. It’s not really bad either but the young notes and bitter dryness on the finish leave this one unbalanced for me. I can understand the price given the amount of work that went into making this but at $50 or under there are much better options out there like Henry McKenna, Four Roses Single Barrel, or Knob Creek Single Barrel that are easy to find on the shelf all year round.

Rating: C