Straw | Brown sugar | Light molasses | Orange peel | Cinnamon bark | Rye spice

Caramel | Toffee | Raisinets | Light herbal note | Touch of honey | Surprisingly not overly sweet

Marzipan | Burnt caramel | Leather | Dark chocolate | Quick drop off of flavors with lingering heat and a touch of dryness

Ry3 Whiskey is created using a blending of three American and Candadian ryes of different mashbills and distillates, before being finished in Ron Izalco rum casks. It’s an intriguing idea  from the Virgina Beach blender Phenomenal Spirits, but ends up having a bit of trouble fully coming together. Using the rum casks to help tie the three different ryes together is crafty and somehow isn’t overpowering in the final product, yet there is just a mishmash of different aspects of the base rye whiskeys that don’t fully congeal into a united form. If you like a bit of chaos in your whiskey to keep you on your toes, Ry3 will provide it. That in and of itself can be fun even before you throw in its rum cask finish, but for those looking for elegance and matured complexity, this is not that. I would imagine Ry3 would work wonders in the right cocktail or hot summer day, but as a sipper, its taste doesn’t quite live up to its concept.