Remember Barrell's 15 Year Old Bourbon? Five Years Later, it Returns as a 20 Year Old

In 2018, Kentucky’s Barrell Craft Spirits (BCS) released its very first Grey Label bourbon—kicking off a series of whiskeys that aimed to showcase the blending house’s oldest and rarest stocks. It hit the scene as a 15 year old blend of bourbons from Indiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky bottled at cask strength. The release was well-received and notched a 90-point rating with our tasting panel. Now, nearly six years later, BCS has brought that same liquid back, with an extra 5 years of aging.

While crafting the original Grey Label bourbon, BCS decided to hold back an undisclosed amount rather than bottling it. Chief of distillery operations Tripp Stimson says that the team wanted to explore what flavor and aromatic contributions could be imparted to the whiskey by finishing it in toasted barrels. So BCS procured nine custom barrels, which were toasted for a long time at low temperatures but not charred, and filled them with the liquid. Now, after 5 years, the first barrel has been emptied, bottled, and released.

The first bottling arrives at 20 years old, and the plan is to release the other barrels annually with increasing age statements. The current release carries a recommended retail price of $200 and totals 150 bottles, the majority of which (120) will be available for purchase online. The remaining 30 bottles will be available at BCS’s location in Jefferson, Kentucky.

The new whiskey’s label bills it as a single barrel expression, but it doesn’t conform to the typical single barrel norms. Single barrel is generally accepted as a term for unblended whiskeys that are aged entirely in one barrel, and the vast majority of single barrel whiskeys fit that definition. Barrell’s new whiskey doesn’t. First, it’s a blend of different bourbons that were all aged in separate barrels. It has also been finished in a secondary cask, which seems to defy the definition as well.

So, how can BCS call it a single barrel whiskey? Well, many drinkers may be surprised to learn that “single barrel” doesn’t have the same regulatory protections as other designations like “bottled in bond” or “straight whiskey.” While the term “single barrel” certainly carries much more weight than marketing buzzwords like “hand-crafted” and “small batch,” legally speaking all three of them are on a similar level. In the case of Barrell’s new whiskey, Tripp says the use of “single barrel” refers to the nature of the release—done barrel by barrel—rather than how it was aged.