Raspberry | Blackberry | Black cherry | Plum | Seasoned oak | Leather

Plum | Blackberry | Sour cherry | Chocolate | Raspberry

Dry oak | Black cherry | Tobacco | Vanilla | Oak tannins | Slight earthiness & rye spice

Lux Row Distillers introduced the Blood Oath brand in 2015 as an annual limited edition bourbon series created by then master distiller John Rempe. Rather than following a consistent recipe, each release, called a "Pact," features a unique blend of bourbons, often incorporating unique finishing barrels. The series was built around the concept that once a Pact is released, it is never recreated. Following MGP Ingredients' acquisition of Luxco in 2021, Blood Oath has continued under Rempe's stewardship and remains one of the company's premium annual releases.

Twelve releases in, the Blood Oath line has done well to keep things interesting. Though some may chalk this release up as another “red wine finished bourbon,” the wine casks Rempe used to finish this release tell a different story.

Blood Oath Pact No. 12 is a 51,000 bottle release and features a combination of 9 year ryed and 12 year ryed bourbons, as well as a 7 year ryed bourbon finished first in Montepulciano casks, then in sangiovese casks. Montepulciano is a fruit-forward dry red wine from the Abruzzo region of Italy, and sangiovese is a savory, bone-dry Italian red wine primarily from the Tuscany region.

Though montepulciano and sangiovese are dry wines, they also feature a good amount of acidity. Both the dryness and acidity do come through with this release, though its bourbon base helps offset that with a good amount of its own sweetness. Blood Oath Pact No. 12 is primarily a fruit-forward sip, but the unique character of the montepulciano and sangiovese wine casks makes it familiar, yet more unique than you’d expect.

At no point is the dark fruit found throughout this finished bourbon forceful. It's well integrated and balanced. Its light acidity and mild tannins, combined primarily with black cherry, plum, and blackberry, create a sip that doesn’t align with other red wine finished bourbons. Though it's not a night-and-day difference, at this point, with so many red-wine finished bourbons on the market, even small-to-medium differences stand out more than you’d expect.

The whiskey’s proof keeps it manageable and elegant, but it can also be a bit too tame at times. It tries to ramp up intensity slightly at the end of the finish, but this also reveals that a higher proof might have made the sip overly dry. As is the case, you never know how a different type of wine cask may interact with a bourbon. There’s always hope of creating something new and different, or even surprising. Blood Oath Pact No. 12 is a bit of all of that, resulting in a finished bourbon with something new to say.