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I don’t often do reviews about Yellowstone and their products. Part of the reason is because they lack a truly exciting flagship bottle. The other part is because most of their standard releases seem uninteresting and uninspired. I also think they’ve done a poor job at producing whiskey worth pursuing. This is all despite starting operations at roughly the same time as New Riff, Wilderness Trail, Castle & Key, Peerless and other distilleries. And look at how far those brands have come.
One of the few bright spots in their portfolio has been their Limited Edition release. But even that has become quite boring lately. It relies (or has relied) extensively on sourced bourbon and obscure barrel finishes to be where it is today. Frankly, I consider it as “Blood Oath” under a different label. This might make sense since Luxco bought a 50% stake in Limestone Branch Distillery in 2015.
Yellowstone Limited Edition 2018
Sorry, I just had to vent my frustrations with the brand. It wasn’t always this way. Back in 2016, 2017 and 2018, Yellowstone had a genuinely interesting trilogy of Limited Edition releases. The concept was still based on barrel finishes, but there was an interesting three-part plan developed by Stephen Beam where he would use (and reuse) these barrels three separate times.
First let’s talk about the barrels. I’m going to clear up something that I think has long been misunderstood among the 2016/17/18 Yellowstone LE reviews out there. Stephen Beam claimed he purchased 28 wine barrels from an undisclosed source to finish the 2016 LE batch in. I think many enthusiasts interpreted this as the barrels having once held wine in them. In reality, I have found no evidence that they did. They were built with the intention of being a wine barrel.
What makes a wine barrel different from an American Standard barrel? An ASB is usually just short of 200 liters. A wine barrel holds 225 to 228 liters. That’s roughly a 7 gallon difference. A bourbon barrel also has to be charred whereas almost all wine barrels are just toasted. The exterior typically appears different as well with the wine barrel looking like it’s of higher quality. Here’s a picture I took inside of Spirit of French Lick’s Chai Cellar at the size differences between the two:
In this way, Yellowstone could have really just called the 2016 Limited Edition a “Toasted Barrel Bourbon.” I don’t think it carries the same allure as talking about a wine barrel, so maybe that’s why he did that. I’m going to go one step further and speculate on why Yellowstone even got these wine barrels to begin with. I think it was due to the great barrel shortage of 2015/16 where cooperages could not satisfy demand.
Now that we’re in the mid-2020’s, a few distillers are coming forward with releases that were matured in prestigious casks made by foreign cooperages. Here’s an example of an upcoming MGP/Ross & Squibb release that highlights its maturation in renowned French cooperage Seguin Moreau.
As I mentioned before, I believe the wine barrels that Stephen Beam sourced were unused and arrived with just a toasting treatment. He ended up finishing his bourbon for the 2016 LE in them which effectively made it a “Toasted Barrel Bourbon.” The next two releases would see those barrels opened up and charred to different degrees. Here’s the breakdown:
2016 Yellowstone LE – Bourbon was finished in the toasted (wine) barrels. This could be considered a toasted barrel finished bourbon.
2017 Yellowstone LE – The same casks were handed over to Kelvin Cooperage to receive a Level #1 Char before finishing bourbon in them. This is similar to Woodford Reserve’s Double Oak Bourbon.
2018 Yellowstone LE – Those barrels were once again taken to Kelvin Cooperage to receive a Level #3 Char (probably 35 seconds). The bourbon blend sat in those barrels for almost a year before being dumped. This would be similar to Penelope’s Toasted Barrel (Char Level: Medium) Bourbon.
The bourbon used in Yellowstone Limited Edition
Even though Stephen Beam had begun to distill his own bourbon, he only had 4-year-old stocks available in 2018. This bourbon used a 75/13/12 mash bill and the 75% corn supposedly used white corn instead of standard field corn. He blended his own bourbon with bourbon sourced from Heaven Hill (vis a vis through Luxco). I’m assuming the portion of his own distillate was incredibly small. The Heaven Hill bourbon included barrels aged from 7 years old up to 12. The final product was dumped and proofed down to 101 proof. A total of 12,000 bottles produced for this release.
So how does it taste? I actually had a chance to try this completely blind and had to guess what it was. So my notes are going to include some insight into what I was thinking while I was tasting it. Speaking of which, I sampled this neat in a glencairn.
Tasting Notes
Nose: The first thing that strikes me when I take a sniff is just how strong the barrel influence is with this dram. In my eyes, the amount of tannins I find either means it’s very old or has a secondary barrel finish. If I can look past the oak and tannins, I’m able to pick up stewed fruits and roasted nuts. I also find a decent amount of vanilla. Sweetness comes by way of honey and brown sugar. It’s the start of something that is right up my alley. I hope the taste delivers.
Palate: Upon first sip – and every sip after that – I get a heavy dose of oak, tobacco and chocolate on my tongue. They come together to create a very powerful and complex sensation in my mouth. All of those tannins dry up my tongue a little bit, creating a mild level of bitterness. There is still a good amount of caramel sweetness to help balance it all out. The stewed fruit notes really die down, but vanilla and a slight marshmallow fluff sensation remain. While I was tasting this blind, I commented on how this has a profile much like an Old Forester 1910 or Woodford Double Oaked product.
Finish: After the sip is complete, a dry and oaky sensation remains on my tongue. Some of the (dark) fruit flavors remain along with some and tobacco. The finish loses a lot of sweetness, but it never turns bitter. I’m enjoying the dark and dense aftertaste a lot. It’s unique in a way that’s hard to describe.
Score: 8.4/10
As I sat and pondered which bourbon this could be, I started to move away from my guess of a Brown-Forman product and more towards a really low-proof Elijah Craig Barrel proof batch. The distinct Heaven Hill nuttiness was not really coming up during my session, so I was not entirely confident in my guess. In the end, my guess fell to Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Batch B521 (which was 12 years old and 118 proof).
Upon the reveal, I can see where I was on the right track. There was older bourbon in this blend and the double-barrel finish probably covered up some of the younger barrels. The proof wasn’t as high as I had guessed, but I also wasn’t positive it really was a bottle of ECBP. My guess was based only on what I believed I was tasting and not what I truly believed it to be.
Final Thoughts
The score I gave this bottle is higher than what I typically award a modern batch of Elijah Craig Barrel Proof bourbon. I found more developed flavors and scents and an extra layer that delivered a lot of polish to each sip. I typically love ECBP, but sometimes they can be a bit unwieldly with all of their proof and miss that extra bit of polish.
The contents of this bottle are unique and might fool even the most experienced enthusiast for being more developed and refined than it actually is. This release ended an intriguing experiment that I hope could be reproduced in the future by other producers. Maybe someone will start with an actual barrel that previously held wine (or beer, or another spirit, who knows?). But one thing is for sure – if you see a bottle of the 2018 Yellowstone Limited Edition for sale – you should buy it.