Penelope Bourbon Toasted Barrel Series Barrel Strength

Penelope Bourbon Toasted Barrel Series Barrel Strength 4 Grain Whiskey (That’s a mouthful)

This next review is for Penelope Bourbon Toasted Barrel Series Barrel Strength Whiskey which already gives us a lot to unpack just from the name.  This is a new label which is blending and bottling MGPI Bourbons.

Label says aged 4-5 years and my bottle was Batch #60.  The Toasting was “heavy” and the barrel char level #3.  Made from 4 grains (Corn, Wheat, Rye, Malted Barley).

ABV: 58%

How it smells…vanilla, oak, maple syrup, stone fruit, sniff lightly to avoid frying your nose….with water, nothing new, but the scents are stronger as you aren’t torching your nose.

How it tastes…vanilla sweet to start with some floral notes in the middle.  The end is oaky and bitter and some mild sweetness on the finish….with water, sweeter to start, tiny burst of peppery spice that quickly abates in the middle with vanilla coke at the end, with a short finish of oak and marshmallow.

Price…$68.

Rating...🥃🥃

Final thoughts….I’ve seen Penelope on a lot of store shelves lately and heard a lot of glowing reviews about the products so I figured I’d give it a taste to see what all the buzz is about.  In short, it wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t great.  Given a fine taste and a high price, a 2x 🥃 seems appropriate where the value is depressing the overall rating.  First, let’s talk about how it tastes.  It’s fine.  Not great, but fine.  You get some traditional bourbon notes, the sweetness, the vanilla, and the oak.  A lot of oak.  It lacked the baking spice aspect of bourbons, but you get some of that marshmallow flavor from the toasted barrel finish.  However, I found this a little too oak forward for me.  I’m not afraid of oak, but prefer when it accents the overall flavor profile, not when it dominates.  

Now the value….it’s a 4 barrel proof bourbon, so a bit on the expensive side compared to similar releases from Larceny, 1792, Maker’s Mark, Wild Turkey Rare Breed, etc.  I’m not one to equate age with quality as I’ve had some very good young bourbon and some very bad aged bourbon.  But since it’s a near $70 bottle for a 4 year old, it better be pretty good.  And this is just, fine.

As the name indicates, there’s a lot going on here.  It’s a 4 grain that apparently uses three mash bills, my guess is a high-rye bourbon, a low-rye bourbon and a wheated bourbon.  You have different char levels and different toasted levels for the batches, my Batch #60 is a char #3 and a heavily toasted barrel.  So not the most aggressive of chars, but a healthy char and then a strongly toasted barrel finish.

In a 4-grain release, I expect to get added complexity, perhaps more sweetness from the wheated side while also some restrained spice from the rye.  Here, I’m getting nothing from that rye at all.  Assuming that 2 of the 3 mash bills are rye-based, that’s a bit surprising.  It’s distilled by MGPI so perhaps they aren’t using both rye mash bills, perhaps the 99% corn mash bill instead.  Certainly not the 49% Malted Barley bourbon since the flavors just don’t match up to that.

There’s a lot going on with this release as it pertains to production, less so as it pertains to taste.  With that in mind, this release doesn’t  seem to have a specific goal in mind or perhaps is just doing too much.  It’s like they hedged their hedge position and then hedged that to boot.   Providing so much variability to the process - three different mash bills, varying char levels by batch, varying toasted levels by batch, barrel strength – they lose their direction. This release of Penelope seems to lack a point of view (I can’t believe I just wrote “lacks a point of view”, what is this, English Lit class?), which is too bad.  Cuz it’s not bad whiskey, it’s just fine.  I’ve been using it as a mixer in some cocktails as the oak and the barrel strength can be a benefit, depending on the cocktail…but $70 is a lot to pay for a mixing bourbon.  Then again, perhaps Batch #60 is a bit of a dud and the rest are more palatable.  I’m intrigued enough to try some of their other products, but I’m going to tread warily on this particular release.