Review #125: Savage & Cooke American Whiskey Finished in Zinfandel Barrels

Review #125: Savage & Cooke American Whiskey, Cask Strength, Finished in Zinfandel Barrels

COST: $50 for 750mL bottle (I’m reviewing a sample)

AGE: 4 yrs

MASH BILL: 66% corn, 30% rye, 4% malted barley

PROOF: 113

Dave Phinney is a renowned winemaker that has made may successful labels, but probably none more than the red blend called The Prisoner. (If you’ve heard of High West expression The Prisoner’s Share, that was a High West bourye finished in The Prisoner barrels.) While Dave still has some involvement in the wine industry, in 2018 he started a new venture into the spirits world by creating The Savage & Cooke distillery.

This expression is listed as an American Whiskey because its first maturation was in ex-Bourbon barrels instead of new, charred oak. However, the mashbill is a bourbon. They disclose that the whiskey is sourced, but I’m not positive from where. After maturing for 4 years, some barrels are finished for a couple months in zinfandel barrels of Phinney’s, and then recombined with the other barrels and bottled at cask strength. (It should be noted that because this is called an American Whiskey, this does open the door for additives. I can’t speak as to whether there are any or not, but it’s something to consider.)

Reviewed neat in a Glencairn.

APPEARANCE: An orangey gold (1.4), syrupy looking on the side of the glass with a few thin, slow legs at first but very viscous legs slowly falling from a nice ring of tear drop legs.

NOSE: This is a very sweet nose with mixed berries, caramel, a mix of vanilla and chocolate pudding, and a light dusting of cinnamon sugar. I can occasionally get hints of Runts candy. At first nose, a slight ethanol note, but after a few sips this disappears.

PALATE: This has a thick mouthfeel and a dominating rich sweetness of rich, red berry sauce on vanilla ice cream and a butterscotch drizzle. There’s a defined pop of cinnamon that comes after the sweetness.

FINISH: A medium finish, a bit astringent and slightly drying but with occasional pops of bright berry sweetness. That cinnamon spice from the palate leads off but gives way to caramel sweetness and occasional pops of raspberry, strawberry, or blackberry.

RATING: 5.5/10

VALUE: 8.5/10 (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: It’s a bright whiskey with lots of sweetness. However, I’m not getting a lot of barrel character. I think the zinfandel finish is amplifying those bright, berry, jammy notes, but I think there’s room for more barrel character to shine through to help provide more depth, wood, and spice notes. The astringentness that I caught here and there I think is an artifact of the young age of the whiskey and being cask strength. A couple of drops of water go a long way in this respect, but another year or two of age could also help with this as well as provide some of that barrel character I’m missing.

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