Rebel Yell 10 Year Old Single Barrel Bourbon Review (2024)

By Richard Thomas

Rating: B+

For many years, Rebel Yell 10 Year Old has remained one of the best kept secrets in bourbon fandom. Perhaps that is because it is a Rebel Yell, which is generally perceived as a bargain brand. Certainly bourbon bloggers have been raving about the expression all along, yet somehow it has escaped being the kind of thing is bottle hunted to extinction (i.e. soars in price and even then becomes impossible to get). How it has not met the same fate as, say, Henry McKenna 10 Year Old, is a mystery worth one day exploring… assuming this continues to be the case when I get to it.

As a brand, Rebel Yell is based around wheated bourbon. For most of the 21st century, it was owned by Luxco and produced using whiskey sourced from MGP. Then MGP acquired Luxco, so one really can’t describe it as sourced anymore. So, this is a 10 year old, single barrel expression of MGP’s high wheat bourbon (45% wheat content in the mash), bottled at 100 proof.

The year under review here is for the 2024 release, despite the barrel being listed as distilled in 2012. We know the contents are just 10 years old, precisely because it is a single barrel. Some bloggers have overlooked/misunderstood that point, both with this and with other similar expressions. Legally, Luxco would be required to raise the age statement if it were actually 11 or 12 years old. In a blend, the age statement represents the minimum age of the entire batch, but for a one barrel batch it is the actual age of the entire thing, period. To explain the discrepancy, one need merely understand that sometimes these things are dumped, stored in stainless steel tanks and held for a period of time. Or else sometimes a company will bottle it, fill the cases and then simply keep them stored until later. Both are regular practices in the industry, whereas an age statement is technical, subject to regulation and the label itself is run past the TTB.

The Bourbon
My pour came out with a light amber coloring in the glass. The scent lead with cookie spices and a sliver of dry oak, with the brown sugar and vanilla sweet side rising up afterward. In that respect, imagine cinnamon toast made on Wonder Bread, but with a lot more cookie spices than brown sugar in the mix. The Wonder Bread is tasteless, so it doesn’t matter except as a vessel.

Sipping on the Rebel Yell 10 Year Old 2024 is a touchy musty. The sliver of oak remains just a sliver, but it comes to the fore. The cookie spices remain stable, while the sweet aspect evolves into candy corn and vanilla. The finish is short, dry and spicy. All in all, the bourbon is a lovely sipper, and one where the maturation (and perhaps what floor in the rickhouse it was matured) speaks more loudly than the high wheat part. One can imagine it could have come out spicier and drier with a traditional mash bill, but a softened wheated bourbon it is not.

The Price
A survey of online retailers indicates that the market value for this bottle is between $100 and $160. That ranges from below MSRP (which was $110 the last time I checked) to +$50.