Rossville Union r/Bourbon Single Barrel Pick 2022

Cost: $65 for 750 mL bottle via SharedPour.com (not including shipping)

Age: 7 years

Mash Bill: Blend of 95% rye/5% malt and 51% rye/45% corn/4% malt (it’s been stated that this particular pick heavily favors the 95% rye/5% malt mash bill)

Proof: 113.2

I purchased this in an attempt to get my name picked for a drawing to be able to purchase a bottle of Found North Hell Diver, but to no avail. Let’s see if I regret this purchase now…

Reviewed neat in a Glencairn.

Appearance: Honeyed Chestnut (1.2), with medium, thin legs.

Nose: A spicy, herbal nose. I’m immediately greeted with a powerful mix of mint, dill, and orange zest that really opens up the senses and makes my nose tingle. There’s a little sweetness hiding in the background in the form of vanilla and caramelized sugar. There’s a woody note to it, but it’s coming across more like hickory than oak to me.

Palate: This is velvety on the palate and spreads across the palate with ease. The front end of this sip is loaded with sweetness fading into spice on the backend and going into the finish. I’m picking up orange slice candy and brown sugar fading into oak with a heavy amount of vanillin and then comes the rye spice, cinnamon, and black pepper. And it is not short on spice! It’s certainly tingles and numbs the palate.

Finish: The finish is quite long. The sweetness is mostly faded going into the finish and a lot of herbal and spice notes stand out. Rye spice, mint, clove, and orange zest standout the most. The sweetness pops back up a good 20+ seconds after the swallow in the form of sweet oak and…strangely raisins…

Rating: 6.4/10

Value: 8.4/10 (this value is based on a ratio of the $/mL to the rating above compared to this same ratio for all other r/Bourbon reviews I’ve made and normalized to 10)

Overall: I picked this up mostly to get my name into a drawing for a bottle of Found North Hell Diver, and it didn’t work. Now I also have heard good enough things about this particular barrel pick so figured I wasn’t going to regret having this bottle either way. In the end, I didn’t get a FN Hell Diver, so do I regret this purchase now? Well…maybe… I was wanting to try this specific barrel pick for a while and had even dropped it in my SharedPour cart a couple times before and ultimately took it out. However, after having it finally, I think I would have preferred just doing it as a sample swap than getting a whole bottle, particularly after including the shipping cost.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a good whiskey, but it’s nothing earth shattering or overly impressive. It’s a solid, above average, rye whiskey. But that’s about it. And there’s a whole lot of solid, above average rye whiskies that I can pick up at my local liquor store for less than $65 a bottle, and certainly less than $85 shipped. It’s not a flop, it’s just not as good as some of the other r/Bourbon barrel picks I’ve had.

Lastly, this is a “single barrel pick,” but as I said above, it’s been stated that it’s a blend of two different rye whiskey batches. I’m not sure I completely follow this logic unless the blending is occurring prior to barreling. If anyone has insight on this, please let me know in the comments below.


1 | Disgusting | ...I've not subjected myself to this level

2 | Poor | Balcones Lineage

3 | Bad | High West Double Rye, Jefferson's Ocean 28

4 | Sub-par | Weller's SR, Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select

5 | Good | Buffalo Trace, Sazerac Rye, Green River Wheated

6 | Very Good | Blanton's, Holladay Bourbons, Widow Jane Decadence

7 | Great | Baker's 7yr SiB, WhistlePig PiggyBack SiB, 1792 BiB

8 | Excellent | Most ECBP batches, JD SiB BiB, High West MWND Act 11

9 | Incredible | Barrel Bourbon Batch T8ke, BBC DS #7, Four Roses OESQ

10 | Perfect | Found North Batch 08