By Richard Thomas
Rating: B-
As covered in previous Broken Barrel reviews, the company’s gimmick is stave inserts, which they have trademarked as an “Oak Bill.” This puts a particular twist on the secondary maturation process, commonly referred to as finishing. Whereas conventional finishing involves transferring the whiskey from its original, primary cask to another cask so as to acquire the different characteristics of that cask, stave inserts achieve a similar effect by breaking up that secondary cask and sticking its parts into the original barrel. Broken Barrel prefers to apply the stave treatment after dumping, putting the staves into the batching vat.
This idea didn’t originate with Broken Barrel Whiskey Company, and it is worth noting they have a trademark, not a patent. Most point to the British company Compass Box as the first to use stave inserts for finishing, and the first American whiskey company to do this was Maker’s Mark.
The flagship of their stave insert bourbon is their Small Batch. For this, they use a recipe of 40% French oak staves, 40% ex-bourbon cask staves, and 20% sherry cask staves to finish a two year old, 70% corn, 21% rye, 9% malted barley bourbon. Broken Barrel sources their bourbon from Owensboro, and Thirteenth Colony bourbon has the same mash bill. This Small Batch is bottled at 95 proof.
The Bourbon
Broken Barrel Small Batch’s nose leads with dried fruits and nuts, served up in a hoary wooden bowl. The flavor follows in a similar vein, but atop traditional bourbon brown sugar and vanilla, and with spicier character. This is where the French oak and Sherry cask staves come into things, the former adding the woodier, spicier kick and the latter giving the whiskey it’s dried fruit and nutty notes. That said, even though Broken Barrel puts an interesting twist on their bourbon, it is still clearly a pour with an immature and light character.
The Price
This bottle goes for $35.