Woodinville r/Bourbon Single Barrel Rye Whiskey - BLIND
Woodinville r/Bourbon SiB Rye Whiskey - Blind Review
COST: $80 for 750 mL bottle (I’m reviewing a sample)AGE: 5 yrs
MASH BILL: 100% rye
PROOF: 115
This review is my tasting notes for a completely blind review of a sample from this bottle.
This sample was from bottle #19 of barrel #8328. Reviewed neat in a Glencairn (unless otherwise noted).
APPEARANCE: Tawny orange (1.4), beads beautifully on the side of the glass with medium, fast legs.
NOSE: Orange peel, toasted oak, and Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds cereal with a dusting of cinnamon. The honey note comes in quite sweet at times and accompanied by bright red fruit, it’s reminiscent of a touch of maraschino cherry syrup. The red fruit note comes through more vibrant the longer I sip on this. There’s also a slight salt and black pepper note in the background. (With a little water, sweet oak shows up on the nose along with a lot more orange.) There is really no sign of heat from the nose alone making me think it’s lower proof.
PALATE: The mouthfeel is on the thinner side but slightly buttery. There’s a good pop of dreamsicle with a heavier dose of orange than vanilla cream right at first. There’s a lot of seasoned oak, barrel char, light brown sugar, and a mix of baking spices that dominate the majority of the sip. I get a lot of barrel character on the palate that I don’t find on the nose. Honestly, the nose made me think this was a younger bourbon, but this makes me think it might be a bit older… (With a little bit of water, the orangey, citrus note really comes through as the most dominant.)
FINISH: A heavy vanillin laden toasted oak with a mild spice really dominates the finish without the presence of much sweetness at all. The spice really steps up its game in the finish and lasts the longest of all the notes and comes across as mostly baking spices with a little white pepper. It’s a medium to long finish with a very faint hug.
RATING: 6.4/10
GUESS: True blinds can really humble you. Let me try and explain to you the wild ride my mind was on through this sip. Based on the nose alone (sweet and not very robust), I was thinking this was a 90 proof, young, wheated bourbon. After introducing the palate (a lot more oak and spice), I was thinking this might be more in the 100+ proof range, more like 7-10 years, and a high rye mash bill bourbon or maybe even a barely legal rye whiskey…. Super confident, yo…
So, where I’m landing though is this is a 90-100 proof bourbon that’s 4-6 years old. I’m going to guess this is a wheated bourbon for the fact that the spice is more “baking spice” notes than it is rye spice notes. Humble me…
VALUE: 7.8/10 (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: Welp, I swung and missed. Based on my tasting notes, I could have associated these with a rye whiskey, and as I said in my guess, I came close to thinking it was actually a rye whiskey. However, I chose to fixate on the sweeter parts of this sip and convinced myself the baking spices were coming from a wheated bourbon (which is a common note I find in wheated bourbon).
I normally try and break down “baking spice” into specific spice notes when I can. The fact that I couldn’t really discern it much here, other than occasional cinnamon, made me think this was lower proof. However, I think I should have looked at the spice more general as just “spicy” than “baking spice” and I might have guessed rye whiskey instead. But the mind will play some funny tricks on you, and the hits of vanilla, honey, and brown sugar making me think “sweet,” I then just associated the “spice” as “baking spice” and my brain when to wheated bourbon.
One big takeaway is how for 100% rye, this didn’t have as big of herbal notes as I would have expected (maybe if I knew it was a 100% rye going into it I would have seen it more, but without knowing, they weren’t as front and center as I would have expected). I had some minor glimpses of tea leaves and dill on the palate, but they were faint and not very consistent, so I chose to mostly ignore them. However, that makes this my type of rye whiskey as I’m generally not a fan of the big herbal ryes out there.
The orange, vanilla, and fruit sweetness were well balanced, and the notes of spice add to the complexity. The oak and char notes really make this seem much older than it is as well, and this drinks way under its proof! I’m still a bit shocked that with 100% rye and 115 proof this didn’t have a more vicious bite than it did. Extremely easy drinking rye whiskey!
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, Eagle Rare
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
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