The Best From Twenty Batches Of Barrell Bourbon

By Richard Thomas

Since its inaugural batch of bourbon, Craft Barrell Spirits has become a fan favorite for its mix of blending skill, transparency and devotion to releasing uncut and unfiltered whiskeys at a fairly reasonable price. With their most recent release, the company has put twenty distinct batches of bourbon on shelves in five years. Given that you can still pick up a bottle of Barrell Bourbon Batch 001 for about $150, now seems as good a time as any to look back on the series and pick out the gems.

The Whiskey Reviewer is ideally suited to this task, having written up 14 of those 20 batches, more than any other publication. In our experience, batches of Barrell Bourbon can be counted on as solid B+ cask strength whiskeys. Rarely does a batch score lower than that, although it does happen, and sometimes a batch scores higher. That group of stand-outs is our subject here.

Barrel Bourbon Batch 002: The first Barrell Bourbon batch set what would become the par for the course; the second was the first to surpass it. It was a modest Tennessee-made bourbon, just 5 years old and made from 70% corn, 25% rye, and 5% malted barley, and bottled at 117.8 proof (58.9% ABV). This batch had much in common with its predecessor in terms of statistics, but with a slightly lower proof, and this combined with some variation in the stock made it a different creature. The lower proof meant it wasn’t as hot and had more room to breathe, developing a nuttier, woodier aspect that added to its character and belied its youth.

Barrell Bourbon Batch 006: Batch 006 is one of the releases we didn’t review, but that doesn’t mean we are unfamiliar with it. The stock was the same as in Batch 001 and 002, that 70% corn Tennessee bourbon, but it was more aged by 2016 and came out as a 122.9 proof, 8 1/2 year old whiskey. This is the strongest example to be listed as a Barrell Bourbon gem, and despite numbers suggesting it would be a beast, with a few minutes of air Batch 006 lost all its heat and became drinkable neat. It’s a marvelous example of how a high octane whiskey can actually be quite mild and flavorful in the glass, much as Booker’s used to be back when it was closer to eight years old.

Barrell Bourbon Batch 015: One of the older batches of Barrell Bourbon, this one brought together 9 1/2, 10 and 11 year old whiskeys distilled from two or more distilleries in Kentucky and Tennessee. The cask strength bottling came out relatively mild in this instance, at 107.6 proof (53.8% ABV). It’s complexity, combining traditional bourbon sweetness with ginger cookies, dry and woody spiciness and an earthy character, took it a notch above the Barrell Bourbon standard.

Barrell Bourbon Batch 018: Like the aforementioned installment, Batch 018 is drawn from at least two distilleries in Kentucky and Tennessee. But whereas Batch 015 was a blend of quite mature bourbons, Batch 018 was a blend of middle-aged whiskeys: 11, 14 and 15 year old bourbons. It turned out to be a seriously viscous whiskey, bottled at 111.56 proof (55.78% ABV). The liquid turned over surprisingly light on the palate, however, and presented a very well-balanced and sophisticated profile of vanilla and brown sugar sweetness, juniper and cherries, and spiciness, rounded out by a little barrel char.

That said, perhaps Batch 019 and 020 could be a fifth addition to this list; none of us have gotten to try them yet.