I've Tasted Hundreds of Blended Whiskeys. This Inventive Bourbon Sets a New Standard
Blending has always been an essential part of the American whiskey industry. After all, the process of selecting a few hundred barrels for a batch of Jack Daniel’s, Jim Beam, or Evan Williams involves—you guessed it—blending the liquid from those casks together before bottling and selling.
But, over time, the term has earned a bad rap. That's because American whiskey that falls into the “blended” category comprises mostly neutral grain spirits with a touch of actual whiskey and added colors and flavors to make them seem like the real thing. Such spirits are still a staple in the U.S.—brands like Seagram’s 7 move a lot of units at dive bars around the country.
But distilleries and non-distilling producers have rejuvenated the art of blending, showing just how good the final product can be when done properly. Barrell Craft Spirits (BCS) from Louisville, KY, has led the way, sourcing barrels from different states (and sometimes other countries), combining them to create a product that is greater than the sum of its parts.
BCS focuses on blending straight bourbon: a legal term that means there's no grain spirits or additives allowed. And while the exact source distilleries are undisclosed, BCS usually blends bourbon from Tennessee, Indiana, and Kentucky.
BCS often cask finishes its bourbon as well, which involves putting the spirit into a secondary cask to age further after initial maturation in new charred oak. The most recent example of this method is the new entry in the BCS Cask Finish Series: Mizunara.
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As you can possibly glean by the name, it's a blend of bourbons that was finished in Japanese mizunara oak. This type of wood has been used for cask-finishing bourbon, Scotch, Irish whiskey, and Japanese whisky for decades. But mizunara is notoriously hard to work with because it’s prone to leaking, and the barrels tend to be expensive.
The blend of whiskey for this new expression is made up of bourbon from Indiana (six, seven, and nine years old), Kentucky (eight years old) and Tennessee (eight and 14 years old). The blend's final mash bill is 76 percent corn, 20 percent rye, and four percent malted barley. After blending, the whiskey was finished in mizunara oak barrels for one and a half years and bottled at cask strength of 116.42 proof.
It's not the first in the BCS Cask Finish Series, but it's the best so far. The brand's last release was finished in amburana casks. Amburana is a type of wood from Brazil that, in this writer’s opinion, makes nearly every whiskey it touches taste like a sickly sweet ball of potpourri that explodes in your mouth like a spray of Febreze. Thankfully, that's not the case here. BCS Cask Finish Mizunara is a really tasty bourbon and a great example of how a thoughtful cask finish can augment a whiskey’s flavor.
Mizunara is known to impart notes of sandalwood and spice on a whiskey, and those are indeed present. Despite that lengthy secondary maturation, these flavors are relatively subtle. The palate is rich with chocolate and oak, along with dried fruit, tobacco, vanilla pudding, cinnamon roll, toasted almond, and a healthy dose of stone fruit and blood orange.
Go ahead and add a few drops of water if you’d like to proof it down a little. The palate will open up even further. Overall, the new Barrell Craft Spirits Cask Finish Series: Mizunara is a bit pricey at $90 per bottle, but it’s one that whiskey fans should seek out.
Related: I've Tested Dozens of Bottles of the Hottest Trend in Whiskey. Don't Believe the Hype