Brown sugar | Barrel char | Vanilla | Stewed apple | Black pepper | Oak

Molasses | Oak | Chocolate | Baking spices | Light walnut

Sweet oak | Barrel char | Dark brown sugar | Lingering dry oak

John Graves Mattingly’s Registered Distillery #2 was the first in Marion County, Kentucky, in 1845. Jeff Mattingly, a sixth generation descendant of John Mattingly, revitalized his family history as it relates to whiskey in 2009. Located in Frankfort, Kentucky, “all of J. Mattingly 1845's whiskeys undergo its proprietary double-staving process, allowing the whiskey inside additional surface exposure to charred barrel staves to impart more flavor and color than its competitors' offerings.” Though many of their releases have been limited or distillery-only releases, J. Mattingly 1845 Classic Double Staved Bourbon is an ongoing release.

J. Mattingly 1845 Distillery’s trademarked “double-staving” process involves inserting additional staves in the barrels as the whiskey is aging. As you’d expect, oak is even more prominent than you would traditionally get compared to a whiskey aged the same amount of time (excluding aging climate) without staves. As a result, the whiskey might not necessarily lack complexity of flavor per se, but oak is the dominating flavor that overshadows everything else.

For some, this will be a nice variation of the more typical double-oaked bourbons, which involve finishing in an additional new charred oak barrel. But stave finishing isn’t the same as aging the traditional way, and J. Mattingly 1845 Classic Double Staved Bourbon oak flavors have a touch more punchiness to them. It’s a flavor that has some similarities with aging in smaller barrel sizes. That said, J. Mattingly 1845 Classic Double Staved Bourbon is surprisingly well balanced and even tempered for featuring the amount of oak that it does. Though the price is high for what it delivers, there’s a lot to like here as the quality of the bourbon is noticeable and its oak focus even more so.