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#small-or-craft-distiller
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Koopers Family Barrel Reserve Rye
I’d like to thank the Texas Whiskey Festival, Koopers Whiskey, and their PR partners for providing this sample with no strings attached. Bonus post time again! We’ll probably be having these for a while as I work through a massive sample backlog. Tonight’s is another winner from the Texas Whiskey Festival, this time the winner of the Rye — Must-Try Bottles category. Koopers Family Barrel Reserve Rye is a mixture of four- and seven-year-old rye whiskeys that are then put into used bourbon barrels for finishing. Before bottling, toasted oak staves are added to those barrels as a final step. It is bottled at barrel proof and is available on the Koopers Whiskey website for $65 per bottle. Let’s see how it tastes. Koopers Family Barrel Reserve Rye Purchase Info: This sample was provided at no charge for review purposes. It is available on the Kooper's Whiskey website for $65 per bottle. Price per Drink (50 mL): $4.33 Nose: Sweet berries, mint, vanilla, cedar, and oak. Mouth: Spicy, with not
by Eric Burke2 viewssmall-or-craft-distillerwhiskey-reviewsi-like-thisrye - news
Garrison Brothers Cowboy Bourbon, 2025
I’d like to thank the Texas Whiskey Festival, Garrison Brothers, and their PR partners for providing this sample with no strings attached. When you think of great bourbon, who do you think of first? The obvious answer is Kentucky, right? So much so that there are still folks out there who think that it’s the only place that bourbon can be made. But there are folks all over the country these days who are lining up to prove that other states have what it takes as well. For example, I recently received a couple of samples through the Texas Whiskey Festival. They were promoting the winners of their “Best Texas Whiskey of 2026” competition. I ended up with samples of two of their category winners. We’ll talk about the bourbon today and then hit the rye in a bonus post on Friday, so keep an eye out for that. But before we get into the winner, let’s let the Festival speak for themselves about their contest: The 2026 Texas Whiskey Festival brought together distilleries from across the state fo
by Eric Burke2 viewsbourboni-m-neutral-on-thissmall-or-craft-distillerwhiskey-reviews - news
Wenzel Distillery Sherry Barrel Finished Bourbon, Batch 2
I’d like to thank Wenzel Distillery and their PR team for providing this sample with no strings attached. As I am an old man, I know a lot of old songs. And as much as it pains me to realize this, the 1980s were 40 years ago. Which is an objectively long time. There was an old song by a band called Cinderella, that was popular when I was a young lad titled Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone). And we are living that in the BourbonGuy household this week. We recently got new neighbors on one side of our house. We live in a tightly packed neighborhood, but what made it lovely were all the trees in everyone’s yards. It made it easy to pretend that our houses were further apart than they really were. Well, this week, the new neighbors to the south took down their three extremely large maples. Which sucked for us since they provided shade and, more importantly, privacy from the neighbors beyond them. It was sad and has us trying to figure out how to replace the effect. But it does provi
by Eric Burke2 viewsbourboni-m-neutral-on-thissmall-or-craft-distillerwhiskey-reviews - news
Frey Ranch Farm Strength Uncut Rye
I’d like to thank the folks at Frey Ranch Distillery and their PR team for providing this bottle with no strings attached. Now, I don’t know about you, but I seldom think of farming and Nevada in the same sentence. Mostly because I’ve really only been to the areas that tourists go to. I’ve been to Vegas, visited nature in the area, and driven through Northern Nevada on I-80 a couple of times. And honestly, I never thought about grain farming as I drove through. But apparently I should have. Just over the southern horizon (poetically speaking) from I-80 lives a small town named Fallon. And when you look for Fallon on a satellite view, you notice one thing quite clearly: there is a lot of green on that image. More than my brief visits to the state would have ever led me to believe. I must not be the only one with those thoughts, as the press release spends a few words explaining just that: Using his own slow-grown grains that take Northern Nevada’s climate, topography, and terroir into a
by Eric Burke2 viewsi-like-thisryesmall-or-craft-distillerwhiskey-reviews - news
Revisited: Woodinville Straight Bourbon
I’d like to thank Woodinville Whiskey for sending this review sample with no strings attached. It has been thirteen hundred, thirty-nine days since I last look a look at Woodinville Whiskey . It was the first time that I’d had one of their whiskeys, and it certainly wasn’t the last. Since that time, we’ve looked at a number of their products and liked most of them quite a bit. However, I hadn’t picked up the original bourbon again for a while. So I was very excited when they sent me this bottle in order to promote their recent bottle redesign and new 6-year age statement. God, I love age statements showing up. And it really is a lovely bottle. And since that new bottle was the entire reason I got to take another look at it, I should probably let them tell you a little about it. Woodinville's updated bottle pays homage to the traditional shape that has become synonymous with Woodinville but has been refined to reflect the ultra-premium liquid they produce. The bottle features two differ
by Eric Burke2 viewsbourboni-like-thissmall-or-craft-distillerwhiskey-reviews - news
My Wandering Eye: Tamworth Garden V.S.O.P. Apple Brandy, 7-year-old
I’d like to thank Tamworth Distilling and their PR team for providing this sample with no strings attached. It has been quite a while since we last did a My Wandering Eye post so I thought that I might start with a reminder of what we are doing in this series. My Wandering Eye is an ongoing series reacting to the continually rising prices in the bourbon world. We’ve reached a place where even average products have hit the range where they compete price-wise with other types of aged spirits. If I’m going to be asked to drop $40 to $75 on a mid-range bourbon, I might as well see what else I can get for that money. I hope to see if another spirits category offers something downright tasty in that price range. The goal isn’t to find cheap spirits but to maximize the quality I’m getting at a particular price point. The reviews in this series will all be written through a bourbon drinker’s lens. I used to make hard cider every year. I've been traveling during apple season for the past few ye
by Eric Burke2 viewsmy-wandering-eyei-like-thismisc-reviewssmall-or-craft-distiller