I know some people only occasionally frequent the Bourbon thread, so I am creating this thread as a way to more easily alert Mainboarders when we do a private barrel whiskey pick. This week, a team of nine of us (pperc rv12 Leeroy Jenkins! Keef Detlef Schrempf RockHardJawn39 g8r and 1 more) selected two absolutely amazing River Roots MGP 95/5 rye barrels that will be available around April. River Roots is an up and coming non-distilling producer that has a cult-like following right now for sourcing great barrels and having cool bottling and labeling options. We do not profit on these picks. They are done purely for the fun of it and facilitating a pick that belongs to this board. Below is a link to sign up for reservations and includes all of the info that I have right now except for tasting notes. There is no obligation, but there will be a huge demand for these bottles outside of the board so I need to understand interest here first. These barrels are already well known in the whiskey community and I have been receiving requests, because they were part of a lot of 10 that received exposure by a major whiskey influencer doing a blind tasting of these. You can signup here... https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1...9KhUObqcGay76wHTbJ3kAkyg/viewform?usp=sharing Here are a list of barrels coming this Spring and accompanying artwork and details. I am sure a lot of you are not familiar with River Roots, but trust me on this, they pick exceptional single barrels that are on par with all of the best brands out there right now like Rare Character, Nashville Barrel Company, etc. These are premium barrels, and better than anything we have done to date. Barrel 185 - River Roots "Rye'd or Die" (12 year 3 month 129.77 proof MGP 95/5 rye) Barrel 179 - River Roots "LeeRye Jenkins: least I have rye!" (12 year 3 month 131.90 proof MGP 95/5 rye) Barrel RM-R-A19 - River Roots "De-Rye-ing Gravity: Everyone deserves a chance to rye!" (6 year 6 month 130 proof Green River 100% Kentucky rye) Barrel RL-B-B05 - River Roots "Spider-Monkey: Into the Barrel-Verse" (11 year 6 month Heaven Hill 106.29 proof Kentucky bourbon) To date we have done three picks, and Curious George has become kind of a mascot because our first pick was "Rye Curious" and it just stuck. 2022 Sazerac Rye - "Rye Curious" 90 Proof straight Kentucky rye 2022 Barrell Craft Spirits - "Barrel of Drunkeys" 109.8 proof Kentucky bourbon (8 yr 9 mo) 2023 Stellum - "The Pickle Pick" 118.02 proof Kentucky bourbon (6 years)
These are the best 2 picks we have done. Price point is excellent at $10 per aged year. Don’t sleep on them.
Ahhhh yes….this will probably be my favorite pick since the saz. Saz only wins because it was a cool experience and you always remember your first…..
Cam from Drums and Drams has a big following across a bunch of discords and hosts his own Patreon that I am a member of. Clubs like NEBC and the River Roots Facebook Group are aware of the 10 barrels and the reputation they are getting. It's a long watch so mostly people passed on the info to others.
The new bottles are mgp distillate (Indiana) using their 95% rye whiskey recipe, also known as 95/5. This distillate was sourced by a NDP (non distiller producer). They aged those barrels for just over 12 years in Kentucky (most likely). These barrels were then purchased by another very small NDP called River Roots which is newer to the scene. They’ve attracted a very strong following very quickly given the quality of the barrels of bourbon and rye they’ve acquired as well as their commitment to providing excellent prices relative to other NDPs selling similar barrels. NYGator has been purchasing a lot of River Roots lately and became friendly with their owners. Because of that, he’s gotten us access to purchase some of their highly sought after barrels. We recieved 3 samples of 3 different barrels and 9 TMBers with significant bourbon palates and collections ended up picking 2 out of 3 barrels for purchase as they were both that good and worth getting. River Roots was initially offering us a single barrel but agreed to sell us both barrels we wanted. The third barrel was significantly worse and we did not pick it. We are offering the bottles from these barrels to TMB first as we’ve done with all prior picks shows in the first post of the thread. Because of River Roots’ following, NYGator has been getting messages via a River Roots Discord group for access to these bottles as these barrels were tasted by a major bourbon influencer who spoke extremely highly of the specific barrels we got. Now, he chose 2 other barrels as he had first choice, but these 2 we got were rated nearly as highly and had a different flavor profile and since everyone has a different pallete, these ones we got are arguably just as good if not better to some people. As for the specific influencer and a video recording of him sampling 10 different 95/5 mgp River Roots rye whiskey barrels, I’ll leave that up to NYGator and rv12 as they are more familiar with this person and the live streamed tasting this person did for the 10 barrels. And for what it’s worth, 12+ year mgp 95/5 rye is not readily accessible. Most often it is bottled around 8-9 years aged making these quite special and unique at this time.
Ok well if non-distilling producer, what are they providing? The barrels? Where does the distilling happen? Like is the one from sazerac and they put a label but keep the bottle the same?
I just posted a longer explanation above for you to answer these questions. The Sazerac bottle we did a while back is distilled by Buffalo Trace distilling company. Totally different than these new ones produced in Indiana by MGP distilling company. We got the option to pick a barrel of Sazerac rye through a store that NYGator was friendly with.
Here is 185. I do not agree with him at all on the hot or spice. I think he had tried too much by this point.
The distillers sell the barrels when they are quite young to NDPs. The NDPs age them in their own rickhouses in various US states. That means different temp fluctuations for the barrels, etc lead to different taste outcomes. The barrels sometimes are resold. Ultimately, they are bottled by whomever they sell the barrel to. In this case of these River Roots barrels, they are bottling them from the barrels and will purchase from them directly using a unique link / code. This makes it easy for all of us. They will ship directly to your door.
I do think the spitting affects his choices somewhat as 185 just has such a great finish and I am not sure you can get all of that without swallowing.
Exactly. And 179 was 8.8. It just goes to show, and different palletes will like different things. 8 out of 9 of our pickers chose 185 as the top choice but 179 was so good (more typical 95/5 mgp rye profile) we wanted it too. While this guy picked 179 over 185.
Agreed, but I chatted with him today and he wants both bottles from us, so he knows how good they all are. The thing is that all 10 of these were so good, that it makes it more challenging to decide in context. We put these up against two of the most sought after 95/5 11-12 year ryes from 2024 and they handily beat both. One of the two goes for $600 on secondary. I will probably wind up with 6 or 7 different bottles from this lot, because I know who is doing most of the picks.
buy me two bottles and I’ll give you my opinion. It’s the best way for a novice to experience bourbon
Look, man…I may not have a bourbon library, but I’m far from a poor. I just saw a thread about free scotch and signed up for a few bottles.