Review #181: Blue Note Uncut and Unfiltered – Greenville Bourbon & Whiskey Society Pick: Brown Sugar Blues

MASH BILL: 70% corn, 21% rye, 9% malted barley

PROOF: 119.2

AGE: 4 years

COST: $45 

This is the second barrel pick from the Greenville Bourbon & Whiskey Society in upstate South Carolina: Blue Note’s Unfiltered and Uncut Bourbon Single Barrel Pick: “Brown Sugar Blues.” Blue Note’s Uncut single barrels are generally considered consistently good. I’ve never had one before, but my local bourbon club did a Blue Note pick recently and said it was a brown sugar bomb. Since I didn’t get to participate in the selection process, I was really looking forward to trying this one because I do love me some brown sugar notes! Let’s see if it lives up to its name!

This bottle is from barrel number 22753. Reviewed neat in a Glencairn (unless otherwise noted).

APPEARANCE: A tawny, orange color (1.4); oily in appearance with medium to fat legs. 

NOSE: Sweet and spicy. It lives up to its name with big brown sugar notes right away, a dash of vanilla extract, and a peppery, almost cayenne like spice. Tannic oak lingers in the background. A dried sage like herbal note. Dipping my nose a litter further in the glass, a sweeter caramel corn note, light red berry, and a bright citrus. The vanilla gets stronger the longer it sits. (With a dash of water it actually dilutes the sweetness and spice and brings out more of the sourness of the citrus and earthy notes. The red berry note is a bit more minerally as well.)

PALATE: Syrupy mouthfeel with a menthol like cooling sensation. Big brown sugar sweetness right at the front of the tongue and lemon zest at the back. A pleasant orange marmalade sweetness slowly washes over the whole palate while spicy, red pepper berries bring some heat…a lot of heat… A light cherry note shows up late along with earthy white pepper, toasted corn husks, and vanilla cream. This is pretty drying on the palate and makes my checks hurt after sipping it for a while between the spice and proof heat. (A little water quickly thins this out on the palate. It also thins out most of the sweeter notes like it did on the nose and brings out more earthy notes and a slight mineral note. The cherry does pop a bit more, but also more medicinal.)

FINISH: A medium length, tannic finish. The white pepper and oak transition well from the palate, as well as the peppery spice. The cherry note turns more medicinal the further we get from the swallow. A bright orange citrus lingers and can be brought back to life with a good chew. Quite dry on the palate and leaves a bitterness all over. (With a dash of water, again, the sweeter notes are dialed down and this is more woody and tannic.)

RATING: 5.8/10

OVERALL: With this being quite hot neat, I thought that a dash of water would help open this one up more. But I was surprised to see the water tamped down on the sweeter notes more than it did everything else. While it did help some with the spice, I think it did a disservice overall by making it more earthy and tannic. Overall, the neat pour is good, and from the nose and palate, deserving of the Brown Sugar Blues name, but it’s dry, spicy, and tannic and has some bitter notes that I wish it wouldn’t leave me with. 

Behind the Bottle

Blue Note Uncut is the Single Barrel label of Blue Note Juke Joint Whiskey. Produced by B.R. Distilling Company, a non-distilling producer (NDP), all of the Juke Joint Whiskey is sourced from Green River Distilling (who is also known for the 70/21/9 mash bill).

B.R. Distilling ages their whiskey in rickhouses in Memphis, TN, however, I’ve seen it claimed that some of the Uncut barrels spent some time aging in Owensboro, KY at the O.Z. Tyler Distillery (now Green River). In 2019, this distillery had a partial collapse of rickhouse H that resulted in about 4,500 of the 19,400 barrels stored there being affected. While it was only a corner of the warehouse that collapsed, the entire warehouse was condemned for safety measures, so all surviving bourbon barrels were removed from the warehouse to be stored elsewhere. This was a slow process as they used a “ultra-high reach demolition excavator” to remove all remaining barrels from the warehouse. From best I can tell, the entire cleanup process, including removing all barrels, took over a year to complete.

Now, I can’t find great records on how this all went down, but apparently somehow all or part of those barrels came to be owned by B.R. Distilling and used specifically for their Blue Note Uncut label. My take on this is that O.Z. Tyler didn’t conveniently have an empty warehouse they could drop nearly 15,000 barrels into. So, they picked up the phone and started calling people they thought might be interested in taking those barrels off their hands. Since B.R. Distilling was sourcing whiskey from them at the time, I’m sure they were one of the first to get a call. How many of the barrels B.R. Distilling picked up, I’m not certain. Maybe all of them, maybe part of them, but either way, it has been said that B.R. Distilling is using those barrels specifically for the Blue Note Uncut label.

I have my doubts it is exclusively these barrels that are still being used for the Uncut label. These aren’t just average barrels, they’re warehouse collapse survivor barrels! However, Blue Note isn’t advertising this at all. Maybe doing that would make it too transparent that it isn’t their whiskey (though, to be fair, I think B.R. Distilling is quite transparent about this already), but it just seems like this would be a unique “whiskey story” that B.R. Distilling would want to capitalize on if that were the case: “Warehouse collapse survivor!”, “Unfiltered. Uncut. Unharmed.”, “Exposed to elements during recovery!” There’s just so many different ways to lean into it, but they aren’t, and that’s why I think maybe some Uncut barrels are warehouse collapse survivors, but I don’t think all of them are anymore.

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, Hillrock Estate Sauternes CS

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

6 | Very Good | Blanton's, Holladay Bourbons, Eagle Rare

7 | Great | Baker's 7yr SiB, BBCo Origin High Wheat, 1792 BiB

8 | Excellent | Most ECBP batches, Maker's Mark Wood Finishing releases, High West MWND Act 11

9 | Incredible | Woodford Reserve Batch Proof 121.2, BBC DS #7, Four Roses OESQ

10 | Perfect | Found North Batch 08, RR15