Tarnished Truth High Rye Bourbon Review

By Andrew Graham

Grade: B+

One inevitable consequence of the whiskey boom is that it has led to a bonanza of flashy marketing and, frankly, some gimmicks and hacks to bring product to market quickly.

It is admirable to make something, to witness a whiskey age for however long it takes to become a perfect marriage between wood and grains. It is, however, up for debate whether it is equally admirable to take a barrel of sourced whiskey and make it better by aging it, blending it or finishing it in some unique way. Or perhaps it is admirable in a capitalist sense for a craft distiller to temporarily rely on mass-produced whiskey as it builds out a proper distilling operation or waits for its own spirits to age gracefully.

Or maybe it is perfectly fine for modern whiskey brands to just use sourced whiskey continually.

Whether or not non-distilling producers employ a process worthy of admiration isn’t the point. The point is that clever marketing can’t make a whiskey taste any better, but it can add extra bucks to the cost of a spirit or create demand for products that are rather ordinary, and occasionally inferior. Caveat emptor, as they say.

This is why, when I received the Tarnished Truth high rye expression a few months ago, I was a bit skeptical. This is a product that is trying hard to appeal to trend-setters. From the press kit that touts the fact that the Tarnished Truth distillery is located in an historic, recently renovated (at an $85m cost) hotel in Virginia to the slow-motion promotional video that depicts a group of fashionable hipsters strutting into the aforementioned hotel (soundtrack: “Pull A U” by The Kills) for what seems to be a costume party, this whiskey, as a brand, seems rather thirsty.

It is excellent storytelling — but is it, I wondered, the kind of carefully calibrated brand narrative that exists because it has to?

Eventually, I drank the damn stuff. The good news, at least, for the folks at Tarnished Truth, is that the high rye straight bourbon whiskey stands on its own as a solid, rye-forward bourbon. It is a spirit I would be happy to have around at all times.

It has a mash bill of 60 percent corn, 36 percent rye, and 4 percent malted barley, aged for three years and finished on-site, with an ABV of 43%. MGP sells bourbon with this exact mash bill, and I am assuming that Tarnished Truth sources its three-year expression from there. I don’t know what the finishing process is, but whatever the method, it produces an epic, drinkable, very rye-forward bourbon with a brave amount of spice.

I’ve been thinking of this Tarnished Truth expression as a straight-up rye as opposed to a high-rye bourbon because, to me, that’s what it tastes like.

The Whiskey

Color: Golden orange.

Nose: There is burnt oranges, pecan pie, and faint notes of mint on the nose. This is not a particularly powerful or fragrant nose. Equally of note is what isn’t there: any detectable trace of vanilla or new wood, which one would expect from a bourbon with an age statement of three years.

Flavor: The dominant flavor is an assault of spice. Cinnamon, mace, cayenne, citrus peel. There is a daring sharpness and assertiveness to the flavor. It is warming but not hot. The flavor is still lacking vanilla notes, and at that point, it’s for the better.

I enjoyed this expression most neat; some of those flavors become harder to find when its chilled or diluted.

Finish: It has a brief and friendly finish with an astringency I don’t normally associate with bourbon or rye, but which I really enjoyed.

The Price
This high rye straight bourbon whiskey has an MSRP of $64, and is available in Virginia ABC stores and at the Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach, Virginia.