Brown sugar | Molasses | Grilled pineapple | Oak | Upside-down cake | Unique

Brown sugar | Heavy molasses | Rye spice | Glazed pineapple | Pineapple syrup | Vanilla bean | Faint aged oak | Incredibly sweet | Syrupy mouthfeel

Rye spice | Candied pineapple | Molasses | Oak | Faint roasted nuts | Lingering gently spiced syrup

Bardstown Bourbon Company is known for trying innovative barrel finishes, but nothing to date has been quite as unique as their latest release. Bardstown Bourbon Company Victoria Pineapple Barrel Finish Whiskey is a blend of bourbon and rye that combines pineapple rum barrels, oak staves, and dried pineapples. This 4,200 bottle release is sold exclusively in Kentucky.

The company states that their latest barrel finish release “began thousands of miles from Kentucky, in the Caribbean, where we sourced rum casks that once held premium rum aged with the prized Victoria pineapple. Small, fragrant, and celebrated for its remarkable sweetness, the fruit left a lasting imprint deep within the wood.” Utilizing these barrels, the company filled them with their bourbon rye blend and let it age for 27 months. Dan Callaway, Lofted Spirits’ master blender, stated he tried a number of combinations of pineapple, including fresh, dried, juiced, pulp, and ground, among others, but ultimately landed on dried, giving him the best flavor combination he was looking for to enhance the sip. During the final 3 months of finishing, the company added dried pineapple to the barrels, which was meant to mirror “the process of the original rum’s creation to reveal the tropical notes already developing in the whiskey.”

The combination of rum and pineapple is displayed incessantly from start to finish. It opens with an incredibly unique aroma that delivers huge doses of brown sugar and molasses. A noticeable grilled pineapple and upside-down cake layers in additional sweetness to the aroma. The brown sugar and molasses carry through to the midpoint, where the molasses dominates. Rye spice appears along with glazed pineapple and pineapple syrup. It’s an incredibly sweet, syrupy mouthfeel that tastes almost like a thick liqueur in terms of viscosity. The sip ends with more molasses and rye spice along with candied pineapple and oak, before morphing to a lingering, gently spiced syrup.

Bardstown Bourbon Company Victoria Pineapple Barrel Finish Whiskey will have two camps of consumers. Some will instantly fall in love with its sweetness and uniqueness, while others will dislike it for those very same reasons. At times it reminded me of a nicely done pre-packaged cocktail or a high proof liqueur, as the base whiskey is overpowered by the rum barrels and pineapple influence. This won’t be a whiskey that you’d reach for often; instead pulling it out for those who prefer a sweeter pour or who are looking for more of an experimental type of whiskey. No doubt it borders on being too sickly sweet at times, but credit goes to Bardstown Bourbon Company for bringing something like this to market, as it’s always fun to see how distilleries are willing to push the boundaries of experimentation.