George Dickel Sour Mash Whisky Hand Selected Barrel, 14yo, Bottle No. 011, 53% abv.

The bartender asked me if I wanted to try something different, but not like Whoop & Holler. In 1878, George Augustus Dickel and his business partners essentially buy out a distillery called Cascade Hollow (basically an area north of Tullahoma, Tennessee) and churn out "Geo. A. Dickel’s Cascade Tennessee Whisky", keeping it "whisky" due to his admiration for Scotch. Like all Tennessee whiskies, George Dickel undergoes the Lincoln County Process, which is filtering the barrel juice in sugar maple charcoal before bottling. George Dickel chill filters, but not sure if they chill the juice before filtering it, or the charcoal is chilled, or something else. Just heard it was different from Jack Daniels process. I heard the origin of using maple charcoal as a filter medium before, but I forgot most of it, only noting that it was for economic reasons and not some sophisticated implementation as we hear from most descriptions. In 2014/15, George Dickel had a sort of single barrel program for their 9 and 14 year old stock (...and 17?). Rumors whisper that Diageo was trying to get rid of their older stock with most going to Orphan Barrel.

Nose: generally sweet, sharp, strange, burnt rice, a little like corn whisky, a little smokey but only when you sniff with your mouth open.

Palate: a little funny, initial and mid palate is pungent, like an intense impulse of peanuts, wood, and very ripe meaty fruits, mid palate is very sharp and the back palate is still very sharp and some tropical fruits pop up.

Finish: medium, peanuts, some spice, becomes nutri-sweet fruit juice later on and its a little powdery/nutty in texture and flavor.

This one is pretty strong pina colada, but more pungent and flavors attack your tongue piece by piece, very unbalanced. Didn't get the over-oaked-ness some tasters described. Gonna be conservative here.

Grade: C

Image courtesy of Eric Yee.

Eric Yee

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