I’ve only had one other whisky from Distillery 291 from Colorado. I was immediately thrilled by the concept of a minuscule distillery doing everything themselves including building the stills. On top of that, contrary to some other small distilleries, the whisky was actually really good.

So, following that, I decided to get my hands on a bottle of the stuff, and this was the only one that was available at a reasonable price in Europe. A few days later it arrived and some samples were shared. A little while ago I finally wrote tastings notes. Interestingly, I can’t remember whether I actually already finished the bottle or not, and I’m not going to look for it now…

Anyway, here it goes. For more info on the really interesting distillery, check out the earlier post here.

Sniff:
A rather gentle and complex rye with lots of notes of orange. Fried pumpkin, dark rye bread.

Sip:
There’s some typical rye spiciness, and dark crusty bread. Some chili heat, pumpkin seeds, orange (both flesh and pith).

Swallow:
The finish is largely similar. Lots of spicy notes, but the heat diminishes quickly. Dry, slightly sharp, orange, bread, pumpkin.

It does exactly what you expect a rye whisky to do, but it’s a bit less interesting than I hoped for. It’s a bit more straight forward, so I guess I’ll have to get my hands on another original bottling to find out whether I was wrong the first time, or not.

Still, a rye whisky doing what it is supposed to is a nice thing in the worst of circumstances. So, I am far from disappointed.

86/100