New NBC 13-Year & 9-Year Bourbons

We return to Nashville for the second time this week, and I'm starting to notice a trend of some of our older releases making a comeback. Bourbon Heritage Month may be over, but we aren't slowing down with fantastic bourbon releases. Today, we have two new barrels from Nashville Barrel Co.

Of the 50-plus barrels we tried on our last trip to Tennessee, we wanted to revisit this run of lower-proof Indiana bourbons that NBC got its start with. It's been over two years since our last pick from this run, a 10-year barrel we called "Oldfangled." Now 13 years old, these barrels have spent as much of their lives in Nashville as they did outside of Tennessee, and we think the Music City has only made them better.

You'd be hard-pressed to find many other bourbons on the market that drink with this much life and brightness at this age. This is the kind of barrel that we think drinks right alongside some of the allocated releases you see toward the end of the year.

The nose is welcoming and approachable, yet still layered. Perfumed cigar box and sweet oak start things off before moving into sparkling vanilla cream soda, expressed orange peel, juicy sugar-tumbled berries, and a little bit of butterscotch.

The palate is lively, with a caramel green apple sucker opening that moves into cherries with whipped cream and a bit of spiced apricot jam. It continues into dark chocolate malt, dried raspberry, and a pleasing amount of lightly smoked, seasoned oak. The palate continues to move and evolve, with growing orange oils providing impressive brightness for the age.

The finish moves from whipped cream toward vanilla custard, with baked cherry cobbler and that torched orange from the nose and palate never disappearing. Building continually through the finish, this is a truly layered and multifaceted pour.

We're also back with another barrel under the brand-new Louisville Rickhouse Whiskey Co. label. We thought these now nine-year-old Kentucky Kelvin 70/21/9 barrels were long gone, but somehow they made their way into the hands of our Nashville friends. This one was selected during the grand opening of their new rickhouse and tasting room in Louisville, Kentucky. Maybe it was the unlimited boxes of White Castle sliders, or maybe it was the hollow knock of this particular barrel while I was walking around, but this one was an easy yes.

The nose gives no indication of its 130 proof, except that it’s rich and packed. Dense, reduced tropical fruit cocktail, vanilla cake with buttercream frosting, and brown sugar lead the way. The longer it rests, the more it develops this sangria-like fruit jamminess with a touch of molasses.

Dense and velvety, the palate is layered with Hershey’s chocolate syrup drizzled over smoked oak and vanilla ice cream. It gives sweeter notes of butterscotch chips before moving into dark cherry, blueberry candy, and freshly brewed espresso, growing creamier and creamier the longer it rests.

The finish is heavy with dry oak and black raspberry chip, but surprisingly, there’s still a juicy amount of fruit punch, just heavily, heavily spiked.