WhistlePig’s Boss Hog Rye Whiskey Is Worth Trying

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Welcome to Taste Test, where every week our critic Jonah Flicker explores the most buzzworthy and interesting whiskeys in the world. Check back each Sunday for his latest whiskey review.

When I first read about the new Boss Hog release, WhistlePig’s annual rye whiskey that retails for about $600, I thought it might be a terrible mistake. Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration—it’s only whiskey, after all—but it just sounded like a cask finish that had gone awry, an over-the-top experiment that should not work. Turns out I was wrong. This whiskey is one of the best in the series, and here’s why.

The 11th edition of Boss Hog is called the Juggernaut, and as always it’s a version of the distillery’s sourced Canadian rye whiskey that has been finished in an unusual type of cask. The program started in 2013 as a series of single barrels that were selected by the late master distiller Dave Pickerell. Over the past decade, there have been some hits and misses, but if nothing else Boss Hog has always been big in flavor and concept. Last year’s Commandments release was a weird one, finished in casks previously filled with frankincense and myrrh-infused spirit along with mead barrels. Boss Hog VII, Magellan’s Atlantic, was a disaster due to the use of amburana casks, although there are many who would dispute this take.

On the bright side, the eighth release, Lapulapu’s Pacific, was a success—an 18-year-old rye finished in rum barrels. Boss Hog IV, the Black Prince, was also quite good, a 14-year-old rye finished in Armagnac casks (something that WhistlePig founder Raj Bhakta, who was forced out in 2016, would fully embrace with his current company Bhakta Spirits). The Juggernaut joins these triumphs, and here’s what makes it so interesting. After initially aging in new oak barrels, the rye was put into what the distillery calls Thandai whiskey barrels. Thandai is an Indian drink made from milk and spices, and since it is not aged in a barrel the team had to get creative. They created a rye whiskey infused with saffron, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, fennel, poppy, and black peppercorn, aged that in a barrel, and then used that seasoned barrel to finish the rye whiskey that went into this release—something they claim is a first. Like other Boss Hog releases, the whiskey is bottled at barrel proof (in this case 103.8 to 105.2, depending on the barrel) as single barrel release.

The Juggernaut’s color is a rusty amber, veering towards orange. The nose is extremely fragrant, with strong spice and botanicals aromas wafting around a fruity rye base. There is so much going on with the palate here, and it hurtles towards confusion with the first sip but thankfully settles back into place. The rye character is not lost, although for a moment it appears like it could be. No, that whiskey base is still there, but there is a literal spice basket weaving around your tongue as you sip, with notes of all of the aforementioned spices as well as allspice, honey, vanilla, caramel, ripe apple, and maple.

Will The Juggernaut be your everyday sipper? Probably not, but when put into the context of what Boss Hog’s raison d’être is, it works. This is an unusual and effective cask-finished rye that takes the whiskey into new territory while not losing its course. WhistlePig is often most successful when it keeps things relatively simple, like its recent wine barrel-finished rye. Sometimes its experiments feel more like gimmicks, like putting barrels in F1 wind testing tunnels. There might be a little bit of gimmick involved here too, but the end result is what really matters—and in this case, it’s a very intriguing new whiskey.

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Score: 93