Bootstrap molasses | Cinnamon spice | Burnt sugar | Shoe polish | Seasoned oak | Coconut macaroon

Nutty | Dark chocolate | Roasted coffee beans | Cola | Shades of sweetness

Roasted malt | Barrel tannins | Char | Mild smokiness | Ramp up of heat

Barrell Craft Spirits has proven over the last 10 years that they are great blenders. They have proven this time and time again with their Barrell Bourbon batches, but when the company moves into an unexplored blended or finished category (e.g. Seagrass, Armida, Dovetail), it’s always worth taking note. Barrell dubs this release as part of their expanding “Cask Finished Series,” but the name is only telling half the tale.

Barrell Bourbon Cask Finish Series: Tale of Two Islands Edition 001 rides on the coattails of one of their lesser known releases, 2018’s Tale of Two Islands Rum. That was a rum finished in peated Islay single malt barrels. For their latest release, Barrell took those used barrels and finished a newly concocted blend of bourbons in them. The result is just as unique as it sounds.

The bourbon’s nose features a big aroma filled with strong notes of bootstrap molasses, sharp cinnamon spice, a bit of shoe polish, and a nice but fleeting coconut macaroon accent. The palate is where things start to buck expectations. It’s very nut forward, with a rich dark chocolate, roasted coffee beans, and not-very-sweet cola base. Likewise, the finish features roasted malt, barrel tannins, barrel char, and mild smokiness. Taken as a whole, it’s so unlike anything else on the market, that it's difficult to fully wrap your tastebuds around. It features a much more robust and roasted flavor profile than I expected from a rum and Islay whisky cask finish. I can't say it veers in any one direction completely and is surprisingly noncommittal. Its flavor profile is well outside of what we’ve gotten from a Barrell product before, making it hard to put in a box and fully define to a T. Its uniqueness is its blessing but perhaps also a curse.