Meet Barrell Craft Spirits: A Game-Changing Spirits Brand

Welcome to Talking Points, a series that looks at what makes certain products worth talking about, brought to you by Gear Patrol Studios.

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These days, ‘Blended American whiskey’ is something to celebrate. Louisville-based Barrell Craft Spirts has transformed the category and elevated the art of blending by using straight whiskeys and being among the first to bottle them exclusively at cask strength. Innovative, forward-thinking and unapologetically progressive, the original pre-eminent blender of unique cask strength whiskey and rum has taken the spirits world by storm.

With two Best Bourbon titles from the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, and countless other high honors to its name, Barrell Craft Spirits is the bourbon brand to watch.

Barrell Craft Spirits

The Backstory

Barrell Craft Spirits: The Original, Independent Blender of Cask Strength Whiskey

Barrell Craft Spirits is not a distillery – it’s a place where exceptional spirits from around the world are blended and bottled. While this approach is relatively new in the U.S., it’s a long-celebrated art in Scotch production and frees the team up to work with a wider range of exciting spirits.

Their team personally tastes and blends hundreds of products each year. They’ve experimented with thousands of unique blends over the past 10 years and proudly call themselves “passionate perfectionists fueled by curiosity.”

For years, fans have flocked to BCS for the company’s batched, limited releases, each of which have a distinct flavor profile and are only produced once. Their extensive stocks of high-quality casks allow them to create extraordinary blends that other brands could never compete with. Aiming to maximize the nuances of each ingredient, their spirits offer creative finishes and a liberated approach to blending.

While fans can still enjoy upcoming batches and plenty of rare, limited edition blends at Barrell, they can also kick back with ongoing releases like Seagrass, Dovetail and, most recently, Vantage, which dropped just in time for the holidays. Ranked #3 on Whisky Advocate’s Top 20 Most Exciting Whiskies of 2022, this is a spirit you don’t want to miss.

If you’re new to the brand, Vantage is a great place to start. These spirits represent the company’s commitment to stocking an ‘ongoing’ product. One that fans can keep coming back for.

The Gist

So How Does Barrell Craft Spirits Actually Blend Vantage Bourbon?

At its core, Vantage is a representation of BCS’s true blending expertise. It’s beyond interesting. It’s impressive and delicious, showcasing the brand’s unique point of view.

Years of award-winning research and development went into this release. Notably, Vantage is a blend of straight bourbons finished in three distinct virgin oak casks: Mizunara, French and toasted American.

Each component whiskey in Barrell Vantage was finished separately. Once ready, the liquid was “systematically combined according to a blending process fueled by scientific approach, experience, creativity and experimentation.” By paying close attention to the wood in each cask, the BCS team could tailor their blend and layer interesting flavors throughout the bourbon.

Our POV

Barrell Craft Spirits Should Be On Every Bourbon Lover’s Shelf

In reviewing Vantage, Whisky Advocate explained Barrell Craft Spirits is “already an established force in the world of blending, [having] demonstrated its finishing prowess with a series of creative releases that marry different cask types together.” Now, it adds, “Vantage is the most recent, and to us, the most successful.”

With hundreds of awards to their name and over a dozen interesting bourbons in its lineup, Barrell Craft Spirits is a brand that will bring whiskey lovers to new places.

Their ultimate goal is ‘pushing the boundaries of blending’ and elevating barrels into something greater than the sum of their parts, and today, we can confirm BCS has undoubtedly succeeded.

This multi-dimensional spirit showcases the brand’s inimitable expertise and mad-scientist handiwork. It’s a perfect backdrop for fascinating cocktail discourse, but, frankly, we’re just excited to serve it up and enjoy the results.

Price: $90

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