Bardstown Bourbon Company The Prisoner Bourbon Review
By Richard Thomas
Rating: B
(Credit: BBCo)
Bardstown Bourbon Company (BBCo) has added a new expression to their periodic Collaboration Series, The Prisoner. It has much in common with the preceding release, Phifer Pavitt Reserve: it’s based on a 9 year old Tennessee-made bourbon, which has been given an extra long finish of 18 months in wine barrels. In this case, that French oak barrel stock comes from The Prisoner. This one was done at a slightly lower 100 proof.
I thought Phifer Pavitt Reserve was excellent, certainly among the best examples of a whiskey finished in red wine barrels I have tried to this day. The Prisoner is good, but not as good. This points directly to an issue I often come across with barrel finishes: it’s not enough to find some excellent barrel stock that has been used to mature an excellent drink; that drink must also compliment the new contents of its own barrel.
The Bourbon
A pour of this bourbon has a deep amber, while coating the glass leaves behind beady, slow-moving tears on a thick, viscous sheet. The nose indicates a little too much wine cask influence: it smacks of red wine spices and green wood as much of black cherry-driven wine fruitiness, and this overpowers the candy corn and toffee of the bourbon underneath.
The flavor is somewhat better balanced. That toffee and candy corn base still has a thick layer of that same red wine-style spiciness on top, but now with a more pleasant aspect of nuttiness and oak in place of green wood. The finish went down nutty, woody and spicy.
The Price
BBCo’s The Prisoner Collaboration Bourbon is officially priced at $125.
