Cedar Ridge Port Cask Finished Bourbon Review (2025)

By Richard Thomas

Rating: B

My first acquaintance with Iowa’s Cedar Ridge Distillery was 7 1/2 years ago, one of those things that serves to remind me just how long I have been writing about whiskey. I had traveled to Iowa to visit a different distillery, invited for the bottling and launch of a different product, but I made a point of swinging out to Swisher and making a visit. My thinking was how often am I going to be in that area, which proved correct: I have not found the time to revisit Iowa since. That visit led me to writing up the distillery’s basic bourbon, rye, wheat whiskey and single malt, but other expressions have followed since.

One of those is their introduction of a Port cask finished versions of their bourbon and rye, released as a small batch on an annual basis. Angel’s Envy has made the Port cask finish a staple of American whiskey-makers in general, but Cedar Ridge has their own special twist on the style. They were a winery before they became a distillery, and a distillery before they got into whiskey-making. So, the Port casks used for a bourbon like this one comes from their own locally made fortified wine. Cedar Ridge made the wine and the wine-derived spirits used to fortify it; made that into the Port that they aged on their property; made their own craft bourbon; and then repurposed their own Port casks for the secondary maturation of that bourbon. It’s quite a feat of vertical integration.

The Bourbon
My pour, done into a Norlan whisky glass (this glass now has many copycats), took on a bright and reddened amber coloring. The nose smacked of a toasted graham cracker with a dusting of brown sugar, cinnamon and a drizzle of caramel.

That nose was an indicator that the Port cask influence on this bourbon was going to take a route through woody flavors in the main, which is what happens more often than not, and that was indeed the case here. Running through that traditional bourbon platform of brown sugar, cinnamon and caramel was a current of dry wood. The finish rolled off that current, with an initial dash of cookie spices fading back down to dry wood.

The result was a flavorful, straight-forward take on a Port finished bourbon, and one with a nice price point no less.

The Price
This bottle is listed at $60.