Honeycomb | Butterscotch | Cinnamon toast | Allspice

Honey Smacks cereal | Clover honey | Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal | Sweet

Honey | Toasted almonds | Toasted cinnamon | Orange slice candy | Mild toasted oak | Lingering honey sweetness

It’s been quite the journey since Penelope released Rio in 2023. With Amburana finishing rapidly gaining popularity at the time, Penelope hit the market with Rio at exactly the right moment. Now, with five national releases under them (including multiple one-off blends for private selections), the company has made it a point to offer slight variations from year to year. It’s hard to call Rio batches carbon copies from one batch to the next. With Amburana finishing now familiar to many whiskey drinkers, there’s even been some backlash towards it, which isn’t uncommon with anything in life that sees a rapid climb in popularity. It’s not surprising that Penelope dialed back the Amburana finishing for this year’s batch, resulting in a Rio that is more honey forward than ever before.

Honey dominates every aspect of this year’s release of Rio, but in previous editions of Rio, like last year’s release, and other companies’ honey-finished bourbons, the honey flavor isn’t as acute. For anyone who has had an intensely honey-finished bourbon, the raw honey flavor can cross the line and become too much. This year’s Rio batch features a nice, well-rounded honey flavoring, and surprisingly, this isn’t accomplished by ramping up the influence of Amburaua either. It also doesn’t feature the typical overpowering Amburaua flavors that often come with its particular style of finishing either. There’s some light toasted cinnamon and toasted oak, but it's a shadow of the intensity it's been in previous releases.

It’s impossible to truly satisfy everyone with a particular batch of Rio. Some want more honey, others more Amburana, and others may want more spice. Penelope has done well offering slight variations from year to year, and with demand for Amburana finished whiskeys cooled, Penelope is releasing enough bottles of Rio to finally catch up with demand. Though this year’s release is more honey-forward than Amburana-forward than I’d like it to be, Penelope once again succeeds in its ability to find a happy middle ground.

The bourbon in review is from Batch 26-901.