Hi Bourbon enthusiast
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You must be 21 or over to enter this website. If you're not old enough to drink, then you're not old enough to read Breaking Bourbon.
Please read and drink responsibly.
Classification: Whiskey Finished in Honey Barrels
Company: Steel Bending Spirits
Distillery: Sourced from MGP and an undisclosed Kentucky distillery
Release Date: May 2023
Proof: 111.3
Age: NAS (Company website states a blend of 5, 6, and 8 years old whiskeys finished in toasted casks for 3 months, followed by 1 month in ex-honey casks)
Mashbill: Blend of three whiskeys:
Bourbon | 5 Years | Distilled in IN | 60% Corn, 36% Rye, 4% Malted Barley
Bourbon | 6 Years | Distilled in IN | 75% Corn, 21% Rye, 4% Malted Barley
Corn Whiskey | 8 Years | Distilled in KY | 99% Corn, 1% Malted Barley
Color: Dark Gold
MSRP: $60 (2023)
Caramel apple | Dark honey | Rich toasted oak | Wildflower | Chestnut
Honey Smacks cereal | Light brown sugar | Pecans | Light Amaretto | Good balance
Sweet corn | Toasted oak | Salted honey fudge | Rye spice | Medium dry
Utilizing two popular finishing types and combining their flavors profiles proves you can create a new and enjoyable drinking experience from something familiar.
As finished bourbon becomes more established and its perceived boundaries get closer to being reached, a natural course of action is to mix and match. Take note of what has worked well, move the puzzle pieces around, and see what will play nice with each other. Toasted barrel finishing has been wildly popular over the last 4 years, and honey has undergone a more recent explosion in popularity. Pairing the two makes sense especially when you look beyond their popularity and more to how their particular flavors could meld well together.
Ari Sussman, Three Chord’s master blender, has done well shepherding the company’s creative blending direction, and Three Chord Honey Toasted Whiskey just might be their best effort yet. In theory, toasted oak and honey should pair well together and in practice they definitely do. Though leave it up to Sussman to take it a step further and introduce corn whiskey into the equation. With its simple and resounding sweetness, corn whiskey can instantly open up a whiskey and add a new level of depth. Depth doesn’t always mean complexity, and this is a great case of adding dimension to a sip without relying on adding layers of additional flavors that muddle the final product.
Three Chord Honey Toasted Whiskey is a whiskey that nails its concept and does so in an easy to understand sip. Perhaps the whiskey’s only downfall is the company’s reliance on MGP whiskey, whose flavor profile has become all too familiar. The company’s typical brightness and flavor profile is present, which despite the two finishing types used here, still manages to cut through it all. Because of this, I’d like to see a bit more time in the toasted barrels and for the toasted oak notes to have a better presence. Despite these few shortcomings, Three Chord has a great sipping whiskey here. At $60, it's an easy recommendation.
