Barrell Bourbon 009 Review

Barrell has been making a name for themselves as an independent bottler putting out quality sourced whiskey. They mostly seem to be catering to the high end market because all of their bourbon releases have been cask strength and priced at the $80+ mark. What I like about the brand is that they are no frills with no bullshit marketing. The bottle has almost no verbiage on it with basically just a brand name and raw specifications. It's so plain it might as well just say XXX whiskey and I love that. They do have more details about each batch on their website with probably as much information as they can contractually provide due to NDAs.

Thus far, most of their bourbon has been distilled in TN but a few releases have been sourced from Kentucky. TN sourced bourbon is usually easy to guess if it has a decent age and the answer is George Dickel. I've tried a few of the Barrell batches prior to this one and while they were all good, I could never pull the trigger given the retail cost for a 6-9 year old bourbon. But here we have batch 009 that is 13 years old and retails for the same price which seemed pretty fair given today's market. 

Aged 13 years; Distilled in TN (75% corn, 18% rye, 7% barley); 56.05% ABV; Bottle 2112; $80

Nose: Yep, smells like George Dickel: corn bread, vanilla, anise rye spice, and multivitamin notes. There's also some old wood at play. It's rather rich which should be expected given the proof and age.

Taste: Like the nose, it's Dickel forward with vanilla, corn, and Flintstone vitamins. There's a little bit of sour old wood in there too but loads of nice wood notes, sweetness, and lots of rye spice bite. The upped proof and longer aging has smoothed the funky notes much like in what I experienced with a 14 year old Dickel store select. The finish is surprisingly spicy which I think can be attributed to the higher proof.

Thoughts: Of the four or five Barrell Bourbon batches I have tried, this is the best by far. It's woody, sweet, spicy, and the Dickel funk isn't too off-putting. Having said that, if you don't like George Dickel than you should steer way clear of this. I liked it enough to be happy with the purchase but don't feel strongly enough about it to run out and grab a spare. If splitting hairs, I think I might have liked the 14 year store select I had a little better than this but both are pretty good drams. 

Rating: B / B+

Note that price is not considered when assigning a rating.