Ammunition bourbon is a wine-forward whiskey that punches above its weight class

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage (or food) that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.

I love whiskey. I’m ambivalent to wine. That made Ammunition’s cabernet-barreled bourbon a slightly weird call for me.

While I’m used to Scotches aged in unique casks to impart flavor, it’s not something I’ve seen with American bourbons all that often. With a Scotch, wine or sherry barrels impart calming fruit sweetness to pair with the salt and peat of the spirit itself. But bourbon is already a little sweeter to begin with; would this be too much? Not enough? Wine-tainted whiskey? Whiskey-tainted wine?

Either way, it was an interesting proposition. Ammunition is aged at least four years and clocks in at my local Woodman’s at about $40. While it isn’t a bargain bourbon it’s still relatively cheap in a market where other new spirits are stupidly expensive. But none of that matters if it tastes like a bar mat at the end of the night.

Let’s see how it is.

Ammunition Bourbon on ice: B

This pours with a rich caramel color that seems a little too dark to be purely barrel-added, particularly for a four-year malt. It undeniably looks great, however, and some of that rich color can be explained by the six months it spent in Bordeaux wine casks.

The wine influence creates a noticeable lightness on the nose, which smells clean and inviting. There’s red wine, fruit and grain swirling together that lets you know this isn’t your typical glass of Kentucky whiskey.

The first sip is solidly smooth. The spirit inside wouldn’t be old enough for kindergarten, but it tastes wise beyond those years. The warmth of a cask strength whiskey is there, but there’s no burn. Admittedly, that may be because I’m starting with a glass on ice, but this is supremely mellow.

That wine is prevalent in each sip. I’m not a wine guy, but this aged grape flavor profile undoubtedly helps cover up any of the flaws that come with a younger malt.

The issue there is that it doesn’t really taste like a bourbon. The sweetness isn’t from the wine, it’s from that grape profile. The depth isn’t quite there. It’s a good sipper, a proper dram that’s easy to drink. But it’s not quite what I’m looking for if I’m pulling from a bottle of whiskey.

Maybe I did this all wrong. Lemme try it neat, like I probably should have to start.

Ammunition Bourbon neat: B

You get more of that boozy warmth off the top without the ice, but the headliner here remains the wine cask influence. This is a bourbon, sure, but you can’t escape those grapes.

The taste is wine forward, which means you get those notes of aged grape and oak before the familiar whiskey tenets roll in. There are other fruits at play here; a little cherry, maybe some peach — but mostly, yeah, grape.

That leaves a lingering sweetness that sticks around after the sip. There’s no clear end to this; no demarcation between taste and aftertaste. Something like the muted salt of an Islay Scotch would do wonders here. Instead, you get a spirit that’s undeniably smooth but not especially complex.

But hey, if you like bourbon and wine, look no further. And at $40, it’s not quite a bargain whiskey, but it feels like it’s more expensive than it is.

Would I drink it instead of a Hamm’s?

This is a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I drink Ammunition Bourbon over a cold can of Hamm’s?

Yeah, I like it well enough. You can find better whiskeys at a lower price, but Ammunition is unique and well suited to anyone who likes bourbon and wine similarly. It’s a solid sipper that isn’t overly pretentious, which is a nice change from the spate of other new, higher-end whiskeys on the shelf.