Deep rich caramel | Overcooked cinnamon buns | Maple syrup | Sweet corn | Barrel char | Very rich and warming

Warm maple syrup | Roasted chestnuts | Buttered pecans | Touch of chocolate malt

Dark chocolate | Barrel char | Tobacco | Cinnamon | Lingering maple syrup

Lost Lantern is a non-distiller producer (NDP) that sources their whiskey from multiple distilleries from around the country. While this is nothing new, what differentiates them is that they hand select the barrels and either create new blends combining whiskeys from multiple distilleries, or in their Single Cask series, highlight a particular distillery with the name of the distillery on the bottle’s label.

Having had many whiskeys from Balcones Distillery, I wasn’t sure what Lost Lantern Single Cask #8 was going to offer me. Why involve a second party and not just get it from the horse's mouth? It became clear rather quickly that there is value in curation. Single Cask #8 is incredibly bold and rich with its wealth of dark and roasted flavors and a deep barrel char. This is a dark bourbon both in color and taste.

It’s amazing Balcones was able to get this deep color and intensity of flavors out of a bourbon that was aged for only 2 years in full size barrels. A lot of that probably has to do with roasting the blue corn to an insane degree, but in the end it doesn’t quite matter, because it works. The cask chosen for this release produced a total of 199 bottles.