Wildflower honey | Brown sugar | Light nutmeg | Mild oak | Faint butterscotch hard candy

Spiced honey | Cinnamon cake | Spiced vanilla | Rye spice | Thick mouthfeel | Sickly sweet

Lightly charred oak | Baking spices | Bold spiced honey | Rye spice | White peppercorn | Lingering spiced honey

Now in its third year, Blue Note Honey Bourbon Cask Volume III is being released alongside Blue Note Honey Rye Cask, a honey-finished rye also sourced from Green River Distilling. While releases have been more limited in the past, the company has risen to meet consumer demand by releasing 2,500 cases of both expressions this year. Additionally, for the first time ever, B.R. Distilling Company is offering single barrels of both expressions with select retailers, both of which are extremely limited.

The aroma reveals the extended time the whiskey spent finishing in a honey barrel (the company states 6-9 months), though it doesn’t lean into it as much as the other parts of the sip do. Scents of wildflower honey, brown sugar, and mild oak are present and lead into a sickly sweet midpoint that delivers mouthcoating spiced honey, cinnamon cake, rye spice, and spiced vanilla. The bourbon continues its forceful sweetness to wrap things up, thanks to lightly charred oak that is coated in bold spiced honey, resulting in a lingering finish. 

Compared to Blue Note Honey Bourbon Cask’s first release in 2024, this year’s edition pulls in noticeably more spice notes, particularly rye spice. While the spice adds an interesting twist to the honey sweetness, there's no doubt that, between the two contrasting flavors, this is a honey-forward bourbon first and foremost. This focus on sweetness is also a double-edged sword, as the bourbon is ultimately overshadowed by the incredibly noticeable impact that the honey barrels had on the whiskey.