OOLA Waitsburg Bourbon Review

By Richard Thomas

Rating: B-

OOLA is a stylishly designed micro-distillery located in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district, started in 2010 by an artist and art dealer named Kirby Kallas-Lewis. Their Waitsburg Bourbon started out as a blend of sourced and in-house whiskeys, but nowadays it’s all in-house. It’s a wheated bourbon, aged for five years in standard, 53-gallon barrels.

The Bourbon
Checking out a pour of Waitsburg shows it to be a golden whiskey, and a viscous one. It lays a thick coating on the glass, one that lets out only just a few strong, heavy tears.

The nose is a pleasant, if simple one, smacking of apples, roasted nuts and caramel. So, it’s like a top notch caramel apple rolled in nuts. As I just wrote: simply, but quite pleasant.

The flavor isn’t so fruity, but retains its charms: butterscotch and caramel candy supplemented by spices and pine. The latter aspects continue to rise up to the back-end and carry over into the finish, carry over that is until they fade away. At the end, one is left with just a hint of butterscotch.

The Price
I’ve seen Waitsburg going for between $38 and $45.