By Richard Thomas
(Credit: Curated Barrel Project)
For years, one of the things that has signaled to me someone is really paying attention to American whiskey is if they know who Jake Norris is. After all, Norris was the first head distiller at both Stranahan’s and Laws Whiskey House. Stranahan’s was one of that class of trailblazing small distillers that I call “craft whiskey before there was craft whiskey;” Laws Whiskey House started later, but with the fan-pleasing choice to lay down only 53-gallon American Standard Barrels from the very start, taking none of the maturation shortcuts that were prevalent at the time, one would think he would be the type of figure that would have guys in bourbon clubs eagerly anticipating his next project. Between those two companies, you arguably have the first and second whiskey distilleries of Colorado, one of America’s top whiskey states. Yet that is not quite the case, so I count following Norris as the mark of a true cognoscenti.
Lately Norris has been engaged in building a new distillery, his third start, in Arvada, Coloardo. Concurrent with that has been the launch of the Curated Barrel Project. Although neither Stranahan’s or Laws Whiskey House followed the path of developing a sourced brand to build up while financing and construction were under way, Norris has done plenty of consulting in the intervening years and been around long enough to know this is the time-tested practice for new starts in the business.
The Curated Barrel Project began with a 75% corn, 21% rye bourbon made by North Carolina’s Southern Distilling Company in 2019. After seven years of aging in #4 char barrels, this bourbon was shipped to Arvada, whereupon Norris went to work on it. The first consignment from this production run was released as the Project’s Batch #1. Dubbed “The Control,” the same bourbon is serving as the base for a number of subsequent barrel-finished versions.
The first of those was Batch #2, The Oloroso Sherry Cask, which received several months in a freshly dumped Gonzalez Byass Oloroso cask. Batch #3 uses a Tawny Port cask finish, and was an unreleased sneek peak at the time I got it; it may just have shipped by now.
When I got to sample a set of all three batches, with Batch #3 coming to me as a sneak peek of something in the works and not actually settled yet (let alone released), my sample of Batch #1 was at a cask strength of 117 proof, whereas the commercially released bottling was 95 proof. Batch #2 and the sneak peek at #3 were also at cask strength, but clearly some of the alcohol evaporated away during the secondary round of maturation, because these came out at 105 and 103 proof respectively.
As is my practice in round-ups, I will address the three batches informally. First, taking the core Batch #1 “Control” bourbon, at 117 proof I found it necessary to add a few drops of water. In the main, it’s a bourbon with a foundation of the staple characteristics–vanilla, cookie spices, brown sugar–but with quite a dry and woody twist on the nose. Its standout characteristic is just how balanced and mellow it is, especially with that dry, woody aspect running through it. A solid sipping bourbon in its own right, it has the kind of impressionable character that would serve as a good base for spinning out barrel finishes.
Keeping that in mind and the quality of the cask used, it perhaps should not be a surprise that the Batch #2, Oloroso Cask finish release turned out as well as it did; I rate it higher than the Bardstown Bourbon Company and Copper & Kings Sherry Cask collaboration, which was the last Sherry cask-finished bourbon I thought highly of. The nose smacked of the barn-dried tobacco scent I love so much, while the flavor lead with a leathery, spicy character, buttressed by boozy raisins. The pour was absolute deliciousness.
Batch #3, the Tawny Port Cask, was also good, but not quite the home run that the Oloroso Cask yielded. The nose showed a strong cask-influence, with black cherries couple to leather atop the bourbon base. The flavor played more into bourbon territory than the cask finish, but with an enhanced candy-cum-spicy aspect.
