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A brand new Cask Completed Collection is underway from Lux Row Distillers’ Ezra Brooks model: Up first is an expression completed in Port casks. Formally referred to as Ezra Brooks 99 Proof Cask Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Completed in Port Wine Casks (whew!) it is a tackle Ezra 99 Bourbon (comprised of a mash of 78% corn, 10% rye, and 12% malted barley) that will get a 6 month lengthy further end in genuine Portuguese Port wine casks.
That is the primary in what’s deliberate to be an yearly launched sequence of various cask finishes.
The nostril presents restraint: Boldly spiced with a stronger rye punch than anticipated, it’s sharp and fiery, with parts of toasted corn, burnt match heads, and cayenne. Time in glass encourages a delicate raisin high quality to percolate, although it by no means approaches something I’d describe as fruity, as a major charred high quality endures. A better analogy could be fruitcake or, maybe much less precisely, barely burnt cinnamon toast.
Once more the palate retains issues extra savory than anticipated, although that’s not precisely a criticism: Toasted cereal notes and ample barrel char maintain sway, tempered by varied parts of butterscotch, cinnamon sweet, and a few mint syrup. Time in glass helps these sweeter qualities to construct, however once more it’s by no means the Port bomb that I used to be anticipating. Quite, notes of milk chocolate, spiced almonds, and a mixture of raisin and Maraska cherry rise en path to the end — which is lasting however, once more, fairly toasty with its enduring, smoldering barrel char high quality. A layer of vanilla returns the ultimate moments of the fade-out again to unfinished expectations.
Whereas Ezra Brooks’ Port completed expression doesn’t land precisely the place I believed it could, it’s nonetheless a scrumptious little whiskey that has quite a few dimensions and finally proves laborious to place down. At $35 it’s an enormous steal that works nice by itself however which gained’t really feel like a “waste” if you wish to use it in cocktails. Make it your home bourbon… whereas provides final.
99 proof.
A- / $35 / ezrabrooks.com
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Ezra Brooks 99 Bourbon Port Wine Cask End
$35
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