This New Bourbon Was Finished in Six Casks, and It Works
Do you enjoy a good cask-finished bourbon, maybe one that’s spent some time in a secondary barrel like a sherry butt or a red wine barrel? How about a whiskey that goes way beyond that and gets a secondary maturation in a total of six different barrels? That might seem like overkill, but in the case of the new Gambit No. 6, somehow it works and the whiskey remains balanced even after all of that wood influence.
Gambit No. 6 was created by California’s Foley Family Wines & Spirits. In addition to many different wineries in the company’s lineup, there are a few spirits brands and distilleries including Minden Mill, Ampersand, and the Loch Lomond Group portfolio. This is the second release from FFWS master distiller for innovation, Chip Tate, who previously founded the Balcones distillery in Waco, Texas. According to the brand, he created Gambit to focus on cask finishes, and he certainly has achieved that with this new release. “The nuance of barrel finishing has piqued my interest since I started in the whiskey business more than 20 years ago, and access to these barrels opens a world of possibilities,” he said in a statement. “Gambit No. 6 is a testament to the depths of innovation, flavor, and craftsmanship we can achieve in whiskey making at Foley, building on more than 30 years of heritage as a family-owned, fine wine and luxury estates company.”
The bourbon was made from a mashbill of 78 percent corn, 10 percent rye, and 12 percent malted barley, and aged for six years. Then it was split into two portions at Minden Mill in Nevada. Fifteen percent of the whiskey spent 19 months in American oak barrels previously used to age Cabernet Sauvignon from Ferrari-Carano Vineyards & Winery’s PreVail Wines. The remaining 85 percent spent three months in French oak Chardonnay casks from Ferrari-Carano. That bourbon was split into parcels that were finished for 12 to 16 months in Oloroso sherry, muscatel, apple brandy, and Tokaji wine barrels. Finally, all of the whiskey was blended together and bottled at 92 proof with no chill filtration.
That’s quite a process of dividing, finishing, and blending, but the resulting whiskey is quite good. There’s a lot going on here, as you’d expect, but the flavors that shine through on the palate are notes of cherry, vanilla, orange peel, cinnamon, toasted almond, coconut, pipe tobacco, baked apple, and summer plum. This is a great whiskey to sip neat, but the brand also recommends trying it in an Old Fashioned.
Of course, this is not the only recent whiskey release to be subjected to the forces of many different cask finishes. Another example comes from Frank August, which released Case Study 07: French Connection this spring, an excellent and complex blend of Kentucky bourbon and rye whiskey that was finished in Calvados, Martinique rhum, and Caribbean rum barrels. That release uses half the amount of finishing casks as Gambit No. 6, but one that increases it by 50 percent is Blue Note Special Reserve from B.R. Distilling. We covered one of the previous versions of this whiskey, but the latest is a blend of Kentucky and Tennessee bourbon aged up to 19 years that was finished in nine (!) different casks: Cognac, madeira, sherry, port, Vino de Naranja, vanilla Cognac, apricot brandy, more Cognac, and winter bock. This, too, is another example of how more can actually be, well, more when it comes to cask finishing.
You can find Gambit No. 6 (SRP $70) available to purchase now from stores in 10 different states, or you can order a bottle online from the brand’s website or retailers like Total Wine.
