Review: Bardstown Bourbon Company Collaborative Series: Silver Oak

Bardstown Bourbon Co.’s latest Collaborative Series release returns to wine-finishing. In partnership with Napa’s Silver Oak Winery, this whiskey honors a more than 50-year tradition of aging Cabernet Sauvignon in American oak barrels. Specifically, it’s a blend of six different bourbons aged for 17 months in barrels that previously held Silver Oak Cab.

BBCo. actually launched their Collaborative Series with a cab-finished release from another Napa winery, Phifer Pavitt, in 2019 and returned to the winemaker for a sequel in 2021. While those releases saw a similar amount of wine cask aging, they were far simpler bourbons; first 9- and then 10-year-old Tennessee bourbon from the same mashbill. The bourbon in this latest Silver Oak offering ranges in age from 9 to 15 years old, and all six bourbons are different recipes. It’s the kind of elaborate blending exercise that BBCo. has managed to successfully pull off with some regularity in recent years. Let’s see how Silver Oak stacks up.

The nose is well-balanced with an impressive integration of the wine cask and bourbon. Notes of dark cherry and all-berry jam are layered between toffee, walnut skins, citrus peel, and coffee. As things open, the aroma takes on more baking chocolate, hazelnut, and dark caramel and the fruits become well-baked in crispy tart shells and toasted crusts. The palate is lush and initially quite wine-driven with notes of overripe strawberry and grape skin, soft tannins, and concord jelly. The midpalate tempers the fruit somewhat, offering up seasoned oak and Butterfinger candy bar before a long round and warming finish of baking spice, fig, and tart cherry. Fun stuff. And even better than the Phifer Pavitt releases.

108 proof.

A / $160

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