Barrell Seagrass and Vantage: The Rye Kiyo Actually Likes, and His Favorite Bourbon

I'll be straight about these two, because I have opinions.

Vantage is my favorite bourbon. Seagrass is the one rye I actually like.

What Barrell Actually Does

Barrell Craft Spirits is based in Louisville and doesn't distil. They source aged whiskey and rum, then blend and finish it, and bottle at cask strength.

That sounds less impressive than owning a still until you taste what they do with the finishing. The whole company is a blending operation, and blending is where the skill is.

Seagrass

A blend of American and Canadian ryes, and here's the part that matters: each component is finished separately before anything is combined.

The finishing casks are Martinique rhum, Madeira, and apricot brandy.

Finishing each rye separately and then blending is the expensive way to do it. It means every component gets the cask that suits it, for exactly as long as it needs, instead of everything sharing one compromise.

Rye has a grassy, oceanside quality that the name is pointing at, and the finishing barrels add spice on top of it rather than covering it.

Seagrass and Japanese Apple Juice

This is the thing I want people to try.

All that depth in the Seagrass goes with Japanese apple juice like a match made in heaven.

There's a reason it works. Apricot brandy and apple are both stone-and-orchard fruit, so they meet in the middle instead of fighting. Madeira brings an oxidized, slightly nutty note, the same direction a good apple juice goes as it sits. And Japanese apple juice is pressed from eating apples like Fuji and is denser and less acidic than most, so it has enough body to stand next to a cask-strength rye without disappearing.

Ask for it. It sounds like a strange order and it isn't.

Vantage

A blend of straight bourbons finished in three kinds of virgin oak: mizunara, French, and toasted American.

Three virgin oaks is unusual. Most bourbon finishing uses casks that held something else. Here the wood itself is the variable, and each type is doing a different job, mizunara for sandalwood and incense, French oak for spice and structure, toasted American for vanilla and caramel.

The mizunara is why this bottle sits comfortably next to the Japanese whisky on our shelf. Same wood as Hibiki, Yu and Yamato, used on a Kentucky base.

The result is warm and elegant, and it shows you what oak can do when it's the point rather than the container.

Try Them at Juraku

Both Barrell bottles are on the whisky list at Izakaya Juraku, Lower East Side. Seagrass with the apple juice. That's the one.