If you drink Macallan, Glendronach, or Aberlour, you already know what you like: dried fruit, cocoa, baking spice, and a bit of weight to the whisky. No bourbon is going to give you that in quite the same way. Sherry-seasoned European oak and fresh charred American oak do very different jobs. But, that doesn’t mean that hard-line sherried Scotch lovers can’t find the flavors they love in a different way.
Bourbon can still get you to that flavor, just by a different route. Some bottles use a wine cask finish, spending months or years in ex-sherry, port, or cognac. Others manage it through the base spirit itself, using older stock, higher proof, or a second charred barrel to build richness.
The seven bottles below cover both approaches. While none of them is a substitute for your usual pour, they share a lot of the characteristics you go to sherried Scotch for. So, if you are a sherried Scotch lover, give these bourbons a try and see what you think.
Angel’s Envy Port Finish, 43.3% ABV
This is a great place to start, and one of my go-to bourbons.
Angel’s Envy takes its own Kentucky bourbon, made from a mash bill of 72% corn, 18% rye, and 10% malted barley and aged up to six years, then finishes it for three to six months in 60-gallon ruby port barrels.
I sampled this at the Angel’s Envy distillery in Louisville when I visited in 2024, and I still think about it now. The burn is gentle at first, and then you get waves of vanilla, chocolate, ripe cherries, plums, and raspberries, along with brown sugar, toast, and a hint of oak. The port influence is there without taking over, and the usual bourbon notes come through on the finish. A little departure from sherry, but the flavors are in similar territory.
The fruit here is fresher and jammier than the dried figs and raisins you get from an Oloroso cask, and at 43.3% it is quite a light pour. But that makes it fantastically easy-drinking. If you want the same idea with more behind it, the annual Angel’s Envy Cask Strength release runs around 110 to 120 proof and costs roughly $230.
Old Forester 1910 Old Fine Whisky
No wine cask anywhere near this one. Old Forester gets the dark fruit and chocolate out of wood alone, which makes it a useful thing to try if you want to know what bourbon can do without finishing in other wine cask types.
The story behind this expression goes that, on October 22nd, 1910, a fire on the bottling line stopped production, and whisky that was mature and ready to go into bottles had to be put into a second barrel while the mess was sorted out. What came back out was good enough to become its own release.
The modern bottling copies that accident on purpose. Fully matured bourbon goes into a second new charred oak barrel at a low 100 proof, which Old Forester says lets more of the sweet wood sugars dissolve into the whisky. The mash bill is 72% corn, 18% rye, and 10% malted barley, the same recipe used across the range, and it took Gold at the 2023 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
On the nose, you will find buttercream and sticky toffee, with cedar, stone fruits, and apples. The palate gives you oatmeal raisin cookie and milk chocolate, caramel corn, and spice, with a charred oak and slightly smoky finish.
Rabbit Hole Dareringer
I am a big fan of Rabbit Hole, and Dareinger is a core range expression that I, again, keep coming back to.
The base is a wheated bourbon, using wheat instead of rye as the secondary grain, which gives you a softer and rounder whiskey, with the mash bill at 65% corn, 25% wheat, and 10% malted barley.
It matures in toasted barrels with an alligator char, a heavy char that cracks the inside of the wood into a rough, blistered surface, then spends around two years in Pedro Ximénez sherry casks from Casknolia in Spain.
I tried this at the Rabbit Hole distillery in Louisville and wrote about it in my guide to bourbons for beginners. The deep char on the barrels pushes the caramel forward on the nose, with the sherry sitting just behind it. The palate is rich, with vanilla, red fruits, raisins, cherries, and oak, and the texture stays smooth and gentle.
The PX influence comes through clearly here, and the raisin and fig character will be familiar if that’s what you go to sherried Scotch for.
Starlight Bottled-in-Bond
There is no sherry cask, no port cask, and no wine involved at all here, but I think that Starlight still earns its place on the base spirit, and on one detail in the mash bill that will look familiar to a Scotch drinker.
Starlight is made at Huber’s Orchard and Winery in Borden, Indiana, where the family has been farming since the 1840s and distilling bourbon since 2013. More than 85% of the grain is grown on the estate. The Bottled-in-Bond is a blend of two mash bills, a three-grain recipe of 60% corn, 20% rye, and 20% malted barley, and a four-grain of 51% corn, 20% rye, 20% malted barley, and 9% wheat. That 20% malted barley is high for bourbon, where 5% to 10% is more usual.
The Bottled-in-Bond designation means one distillery, one distillation season, one distiller, at least four years in a federally bonded warehouse, and exactly 50% ABV.
On the nose, you will find caramel and toffee with dried red fruits and toasted oak, followed by butterscotch, melted caramel, vanilla, and red fruit. The finish is long and sweet.
This might be a bit of a leap if you are a cask-finishing lover, but I really do think that Starlight Bottled-in-Bond has a lot to offer to a sherried Scotch drinker, thanks in part to the high proportion of malted barley that lifts the dried fruit notes.
Barrell Craft Spirits Cask Finish Series: P.X. Sherry
If you drink your sherried Scotch at cask strength, this is a great option.
Barrell Craft Spirits is a blender, buying and marrying stock from other producers, which is closer to how an independent bottler works in Scotland. This blend brings together straight bourbons from Kentucky at nine and ten years, Indiana at six, seven, eight, and 12, and Tennessee at seven and 15, all of it finished in Pedro Ximénez sherry casks.
The blend carries a six-year age statement, and the derived mash bill works out at 80% corn, 16% rye, and 4% malted barley. It goes into the bottle at cask strength without chill filtration.
On the nose, you will find raisin first, with tobacco, nutmeg, and dark fruit. The palate gives you black pepper and cedar alongside creamy vanilla and baked stone fruit, with fig and dark chocolate.
It is not really a sherry bomb, and it is not trying to be. The PX sits alongside the bourbon and lifts some of those traditional bourbon notes of caramel, tobacco, and sweetness. A great showcase of bourbon and sherry, and of blending excellence. If you haven’t sampled any BCS yet, do.
Joseph Magnus Straight Bourbon
Most finished bourbons use one cask type. Joseph Magnus uses three finishing casks for this bourbon, moving the whiskey through oloroso sherry, Pedro Ximénez sherry, and cognac casks over several months before blending it back together.
Master blender Nancy Fraley put the recipe together, and it was one of the first triple cask finishes in American whiskey. The base is sourced, mostly older bourbon from MGP in Indiana, generally in the eight to 12 year range.
On the nose you will find stewed fruit and dark chocolate with orange and roasted nuts behind them. The palate carries dark chocolate, caramel, orange, clove, and char, and underneath it runs a savory, slightly funky note that sherry drinkers will recognize as rancio, the same character found in long-aged oloroso and old cognac. The finish is long, with clove and caramel building and a burst of cherry late on.
That rancio note is the most sherried thing on this list, and it comes from the same place it does in Scotch. Joseph Magnus is US-only and allocated, though prices vary widely by retailer.
Wenzel Sherry Cask
This one is very difficult to find, but so worth it if you can. It won World’s Best Finished Bourbon at the World Whiskies Awards in 2025.
The sherry finish here ran far longer than anyone planned. Four years in traditional barrels, then a full three years in an oloroso cask, which is closer to a maturation than a finish. Bill Whitlow, Wenzel’s president and brand ambassador, explained how it happened: “Between the timing of Ghost Coast filling these barrels, shutting down, Wenzel purchasing and moving them, and finally bottling them, an abnormal length of time had passed. Typically you would finish in a Sherry cask for less than a year, but this process led to it aging for a full three years in the secondary aging cask leading to some wild and intense flavors.”
On the nose you will find cherry, dried fig and cocoa. The palate is red fruit, dark chocolate, rich oak, and more cherry, and the finish carries milk chocolate and dark fruit for a good while.
Wenzel is based in Covington, Kentucky, but the whiskey was distilled in Savannah, Georgia by Ghost Coast Distillery, whose equipment and aged stock Wenzel bought in 2022 after Ghost Coast closed. The mash bill is 66% corn, 21% rye, and 13% malted barley.
The catch is availability. Batch 2 arrived in April 2026 at 119.1 proof with 679 bottles, sold at the distillery and online only, and there is no UK distribution.
Which One Should You Try?
None of these is a replacement for the sherried Scotch whisky you already reach for, and none of them is trying to be. But they offer different routes to flavors you already know you like. Once you stop looking for a like-for-like match and start looking for the raisins, the cocoa, the spice, and the weight, bourbon has plenty to offer.
If you are new to all this, Rabbit Hole Dareringer is the easiest starting point, and Angel’s Envy Port Finish is the best value, for me. If you drink your Scotch at cask strength, go for the Barrell.
Have you found a bourbon that hits the same notes as your favorite sherried Scotch? Let us know in the comments.
Read the full article at 7 Bourbons for Sherried Scotch Drinkers
