Round-Up: The Curated Barrel Project

Jake Norris, the first head distiller at both Stranahan’s and Laws Whiskey House, is building a third distillery in Arvada, Colorado, and has launched the Curated Barrel Project while that work goes on. The starting whiskey is a 2019 bourbon from Southern Distilling in North Carolina, mashed at 75% corn and 21% rye, aged seven years in a No. 4 char barrel, then worked on by Norris in Arvada.

Batch 1, called The Control, is that bourbon without a second finish. A sample was tasted at 117 proof; the bottle released to stores is 95 proof. Batch 2 rested for several months in a freshly emptied Gonzalez Byass oloroso cask and came out near 105 proof. Batch 3, a tawny port finish around 103 proof, was still a preview when the roundup was written. Richard Thomas, writing for The Whiskey Reviewer, preferred the oloroso finish, thought the port cask was good but a step behind it, and found the control bourbon balanced and woody enough to carry those later finishes.

Source: The Whiskey Reviewer.