Sunday Evening Review

So OHLQ is putting out their latest barrel picks of Rebel Cask Strength from Lux Row. I haven’t got one but thought I would do a review of one I do have from Papa Joe’s if you haven’t had the chance to taste this wheated cask strength selection.

Make sure you put in the comments any bottles that you would like me to review.

NAME – Rebel Cask Strength Single Barrel

PROOF – 120

AGE – Just lists when it was filled but not when it was bottled. From the multiple ones I have usually around 5 years.

COLOR – toasted pecan (1.4 tawny on the Whiskey Magazine Color Chart)

NOSE – Raw honey, cooked peaches, vanilla ice cream with caramel drizzle, roasted almonds and cinnamon sugar

TASTE – Peanut brittle, fresh berries, tobacco, leather, cinnamon and some coffee with sweet cream.

FINISH – I would call this a fairly long finish. The cooked caramel, tobacco, leather and cinnamon linger until the end.

REVIEW – Really good pour with more complexity and finish than you normally find in a wheated mash bill bourbon. The 120 proof obviously helps this with all of it but have had other wheated mash bill bourbons with far more simplicity and shorter finishes. Especially for a 5 year-ish aging, it really blossomed into something pretty great. Obviously being a barrel pick, this was the best of the already best barrels that Lux Row has to offer. So you would hope that it is something special. If you think this is going to be just another form of Maker’s Mark, it is not and gives you something very different but does hang onto the prototypical sweetness normally found in a wheater.

FINAL COMMENTS – Mash bill for the Rebel Cask Strength is 68% corn, 20% wheat, and 12% malt. Now the other part of this that should be of interest is this, not officially confirmed but sources inside Lux Row have said, that Rebel is sourced juice from Heaven Hill. If the mash bill sounds familiar it’s because it’s the same mash bill as Larceny and Old Fitzgerald. Obviously, the Heaven Hill products come with more age but for a price of $55 for a cask strength barrel pick is a great value.