New Bottles From Barrell Craft Spirits, Chattanooga Whiskey | Bites | nashvillescene.com

Regular Whiskey Wednesday readers probably already know that I’m a fan of both Barrell Craft Spirits and Chattanooga Whiskey Co., two producers who aren’t afraid to get a little weird with some of their product releases as a way to stand out from the mega-distilleries and crowded field of boutique whiskeys. Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to sample a few new offerings from the companies, and they’re definitely worth seeking out if you’re looking for something a little different.

When someone from Barrell reached out to me with an offer to try their newest expression of Barrell Bourbon Cask Finished Series: Ice Wine, I admit I scratched my head. Ice wine? The dessert wine where the sugars of the grapes are concentrated by allowing them to freeze on the vine before harvesting? Wouldn’t that turn whiskey into candy?

I specifically told the representative that Barrell has had such a good track record with what I’ve reviewed before, I was worried this would break the streak and muddle the way I think about the company. He said I should trust him.

Turns out he was right.

This is definitely a unique product and project, created using 11 different individual whiskeys sourced from distilleries in Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Wyoming with ages ranging from five years to 15 years. The mad scientists at Barrell blended all these different expressions together to create a base whiskey that contained all four major American whiskey grains: corn, rye, wheat and malted barley.

Then they re-barrelled that juice in casks that had previously contained ice wine for further finishing. Barrell intentionally created a blend that they felt would stand up to the added acidity and sweetness that the wine casks would impart, and eventually bottled the finished product at a cask strength of 106.52 proof.

Since the combined mash bill of the whiskeys ended up being 71 percent corn, I expected it to be pretty sweet, and it is, but not cloyingly so. Corny whiskeys can end up a little flabby on the palate, but the acidity added from the casks cut through that like a squirt of fresh lemon.

Pale gold in the glass, this whiskey is brightly floral on the nose with hints of cocoa and gingersnaps. It coats the tongue with sweet honey flavors before a long and complex finish of sweet tea and chocolate. The higher proof offers a nice little burn, like s’mores over a campfire, and I think this is a delightful after-dinner treat.

Tennessee is one of the lucky states to have a few bottles of Barrell Bourbon Cask Finished Series: Ice Wine on the shelves, retailing at around $90 a bottle. I can definitely admit I was wrong about this one, and if you find a bottle, don’t be afraid to try it!

In other notable news, our friends from Chattanooga Whiskey have recently released their second edition of Bottled in Bond for 2024, this time a blend of whiskeys distilled in the fall of 2020. You’d think other events would have distracted them during those months, but the distillers soldiered on and created what may be my favorite edition of the entire BiB series so far.

This particular edition is interesting because they chose to include one of their wheated bourbon recipes along with their flagship mash bill and an offering from their experimental distillery. The roasted and toasted grains contribute lovely toffee and chocolate notes that elicited some powerful flavor memories for me.

From my notebook after a late-night tasting session where I first sampled this year’s BiB:

The whiskey finishes like the aroma of a fresh beach towel right after you've dried off from a plunge in a bracing pool on a hot summer day, coconut and cotton and a little bit of salt. (To be fair, Waze took me through the chlorine cloud of the recent pool chemical fire outside of Atlanta, so my taste buds and olfactory receptors may have been permanently affected by that...)

I know, weird, but I stand behind what I wrote!

If you want to take a trip down flavor memory lane, Chattanooga Whiskey’s Bottled in Bond Vintage Series: Fall 2020 is fairly readily available at local spirits stores for around $52.99 a bottle. Let me know what you think of it.

Finally, the Chattanooga folks are at their best when they are at their weirdest, experimenting with unconventional ingredients and distilling procedures. Granted, experiments can come with risks. Last year they released a limoncello made with their whiskey as a base, and I admit I was a little disappointed — it grew on me as it spent time chilling in the freezer but never amounted to much more than an enjoyable novelty.

So when Chattanooga Whiskey Co. announced that they were doing a Citracello this year I was intrigued but not that optimistic. Again, I was wrong.

I actually like the new Bourbon Barreled Citracello quite a bit more. Starting with their flagship Barrel 91 mash bill that always occupies a prominent position on my everyday drinking shelf, the distillers infused more than 125 pounds of citrus peel in the aged whiskey. Using grapefruit, orange and blood orange along with hibiscus, the infusion had three weeks to impart the tartness, sweetness, bitterness and floral components of the fruit and flowers into the spirit, like a lovely steeped tea.

The result is a very small batch of just five barrels that exhibits really interesting elements of sweet and citrus along with a bit of tannic hibiscus tea. Now this one is tougher to come by since it is only available at the Chattanooga tasting room. They still seem to have bottles in stock at $44.99 apiece if you’re feeling like a road trip. Just remember to take a cooler filled with ice if you want to try it chilled when you get home.

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