Barrel King Special Series Fantasy Collection “A Perfect Everyday Dram” Review

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Sorry for the long pause in reviews, fellow readers. It’s been a busy holiday season and I needed some rest and relaxation. Never fear, I have been faithfully chugging away with friends, jotting down my tasting notes and taking pictures – I just haven’t had the time to put them together in a cohesive review. It’s kind of hard to get started after a couple weeks off!

Today’s review is of a bottle that – when I first drank it at my friend Mike’s house – instantly blew me away. In fact, I was so impressed with it that I begged Mike to let me take it home to spend more time with it. He agreed and I am very happy he did. There was so much more to unpack here.

The last time you saw me talk about about a Barrel King product, it was thanks to my friend Evan who was impressed with another one of their offerings (you can read about it here). For that review, I was less impressed with what I was tasting. As a side note, the fans of Barrel King came out of the woodwork to tell me just how much they loved the brand and that I should continue to explore other releases of theirs. So… wish granted?

Barrel King Special Series Fantasy Collection

Finding out information about Barrel King releases through other sources on the internet is kind of hard. I know that most of the information resides within the Barrel King Membership Club and whatever social media channel they use. But from an outsider’s perspective, we know that Barrel King – located in Bourbon, Missouri – focuses on blending whiskey together and (usually) finishing it in creative casks. In their early days, they were known for finishing MGP bourbon in Stagg Jr and Willett bourbon casks.

If they had stuck to just those two casks, I can imagine that their members might have gotten bored with their offerings. So they did what many others before them have done and branched out into different cask finishes. Some of them are your typical finishing casks like toasted oak, Port, Armagnac, Apple Brandy and Sauternes. But the more I dug into them, the more I started to see some truly wild ones. I’m talking “Blueberry Brandy,” “White Wine Honey,” “Coconut Brandy,” “Butter Pecan” and “Cacao” barrels. To borrow an online comment I saw on Whiskeytuber “ADHD Whiskey”‘s channel, Barrel King seems to be approaching “Good Times” levels of flavored… err, finished whiskey. That could be both a good and a bad thing.

It’s not like I don’t have a history of liking finished whiskies, but when the finishing barrels contained liquids that I’ve never heard of as being barrel-aged, that’s where I get a little suspicious of the intent. Especially with so many syrupy fruit brandies out there, surely it’s going to completely overwhelm the whiskey and turn it into something resembling spiked fruit juice, right?

That’s why I mainly stick with casks that I know. But today’s bottle was finished in Sine Qua Non casks. Kudos to you if you knew what that was, but I didn’t, so I had to look it up. It turns out that they’re a wine producer in California that has quite the large cult following. They combine very artistic labels with small estate-grown styles of Syrah and Grenache wines. Not your style? They also make some exceptional Mourvedre, Roussanne and Viognier wines as well.

To dumb it down a bit, their style of wines are overly-ripe and alcoholic. I’ve seen descriptions labeling what they make as “like The Prisoner, but for rich people” and “pancake syrup and booze.” There seems to be a million opinions out there about them but it comes down to this: SQN is extremely polarizing and you are probably rolling the dice on if you’re going to enjoy it or not, but if you end up liking it, you’re going to be hooked for life.

The bottle I’m reviewing today appears to contain a blend of rye whiskies. I’m not sure of the breakdown of which exact rye whiskies went into this, but my guess is MGP’s standard 95/5 and also their 51/45/4 rye whiskey. Please send me a message if you know!

From there, this blend was finished in three different barrels – Sine Qua Non “Red,” Sine Qua Non Grenache and Port. I don’t know the yield for the final product, but I’m guessing it wasn’t the sum of three completely full barrels. It was more likely each barrel was filled with a portion of the rye whiskey before being blended at the very end.

So how was it? Let’s find out.

Tasting Notes

Nose: Notes of soft red wine, plum pudding and simmering strawberry jam are very fruity and inviting. There are lots of soft oak notes and buttery leather. Speaking of butter, one note that really sticks out the most is that liquid movie theater popcorn butter – not the popcorn, just the butter. There’s an overwhelming richness in every sip that I’ve never experienced before. And to be clear, what I’m smelling isn’t in the realm of whiskey anymore. That might turn people off, but it only draws me in more.

Palate: The sensation of “is this even a whiskey?” continues on the tongue. It’s hard to describe just how much this tastes like a whole new spirit category. I’m finding sweetened cranberries, cherries, grapes, pistachios… it’s honestly super close to what I remember the last time I ate Watergate Salad as being. To continue on this wild ride, I’m finding flavors of sweet lime juice, pomegranate and more movie theater liquid butter. Notes of oak, leather and licorice briefly act like a compass to my senses to remind me that there is a whiskey hiding underneath and the floral notes like a bouquet of wildflowers even make me think of a rye whiskey, but the syrupy sweet flavors of table syrup and blackberry wine bring me back to the reality that there’s still so much here that makes it different.

Finish: All of the fruit flavors I have described so far cling to life for a long time as well as that thick, coating mouthfeel of movie theater popcorn butter. It’s everywhere and I love every minute of it. The rye whiskey shows itself at the end by giving me some licorice notes to concentrate on. I’m addicted.

Score: 8.8/10

I need to control myself with all of the great things I’m wanting to spout about this bottle. I know in the past whenever I gush this much about something so polarizing, I tend to find that I’m the minority among my friends (and internet strangers) about how great it really was. But there is something so wildly different about this bottle that I’ve spent the last few days desperately looking into which bottles of Sine Qua Non I should buy. I need to taste them for myself to see if they truly were the difference makers in this blend.

Or maybe it was the Port barrel that I’ve given so little thought to that made all the difference? Maybe but maybe not. I love Port finishes, but I’ve never had any that have given me the array of flavors I found in this bottle before.

Final Thoughts

As with most limited releases, it’s hard to convince people to go find them because finding this one will be the hardest part. And even if it’s still available out there, it won’t be for long. Could Barrel King just make more? Sure! But I don’t know if that’s their style to make multiple iterations of the same Special Series. All I can say is that I was lucky to have tasted this bottle and found a whiskey that really makes me sit up and take notice in a landscape of bottles that are all starting to taste a little too much alike. Great job, Barrel King.