Background

The last time I took a look at honey cask finishes, I bemoaned my inability to try the Holy Grail of them - Belle Meade Honey Cask. Now to be clear, I made my peace with that likely never happening. It’s an absurdly difficult bottle to obtain, carrying a steep ~$1k secondary price. It’s also not exactly sitting on many bar shelves waiting to be ordered by the pour, and since Belle Meade Honey Cask is now Nelson Bros Honey Cask, I figured that was that. So when an opportunity to review a sample of this 2020 release presented itself, I jumped on it.

Now before we get to the notes, some quick details on how Belle Meade put this together. First, they send their empty MGP sourced bourbon barrels to TruBee Honey Farm in Tennessee. They then use those barrels to produce barrel-aged honey. TruBee sends them back, where Belle Meade fills them back up with some delicious, double digit aged MGP juice for finishing an extra 6-8 months. Let’s taste through this end result!

Belle Meade Honey Cask Finish (NAS, 111.2 Proof)

Nose: Wildflower honey, fragrant oak and rich brown sugar. You can tell right from the jump that this is a honey finish, but it’s not overpoweringly sweet or cloying on the nose. Instead it smells rich and old… and really makes me want to try that TruBee barrel-aged honey.

Palate: Bit-o-honey candies melted down into a thick syrup and deposited directly into this glass. Gentle oak, coca-cola candies, hints of black pepper and cinnamon sugar desserts. The occasional hint of lemon. This could be a one-note, “yeah it tastes like honey, cool” experience that instead is layered with intensely vibrant dark sugar, polished oak and spice notes.

Finish: My mouth is watering, salivating, and coated with a lingering vibrant wildflower honey. I turned to talk to my wife and she goes “my god you smell like honey.” It’s layered with lemon peels, oak, dark chocolate and baking spices.

Perfect (10/10)

Overall: When you taste whiskey, you’re supposed to basically throw out your impressions from the initial sip. Your palate is not yet accustomed to the alcohol, and so you really shouldn’t judge a whiskey on the first pass. That is IMPOSSIBLE to do here, because the first sip lights a Wile E. Coyote style fuse to set off pleasure sensor fireworks in my brain. I put the glass down and just went “holy shit.” I toyed with the idea of just using a gif of Schmidt from New Girl saying “NO NOTES” and a 10/10 score, because I have 0 nits to pick. Pour a splash of a lesser whiskey out to belatedly mourn the death of this release.