Review: Chicken Cock Chanticleer Cognac Barrel Finish
Grain & Barrel Spirits follows up last year’s Chicken Cock special edition rye with a much different luxe offering — a Kentucky straight bourbon that’s finished in Cognac barrels. No age statements here, but the mashbill is revealed as 70% corn, 21% rye, and 9% malted barley. Like other recent Chicken Cock bottlings, Chanticleer is sealed in a collectible commemorative tin, this one celebrating the longstanding partnership between France and the U.S.; the tins, by the way, are designed to evoke Prohibition-era booze smuggling containers. Now you know.
Just 32 barrels were produced, so let’s dive in before they’re all gone.
Cognac and whiskey can make for a magical combination, and this bottling is no exception. Initially quite woody on the nose, evoking some age, the lumberyard notes are tempered by fruit, deep notes of plum and a thick smear of spiced syrup moving into a raisin character, clearly driven by the brandy barrel, with time in glass. The palate has all this well represented in a swirl of fruit and spice, notes of cinnamon and apple melding well with an increasingly persistent raisin quality — almost pruny at times. This is all of course by design, the Cognac barrel doing its job of sweetening up the whiskey and giving it a decidedly youthful character. Milk chocolate notes build with time in glass and on the finish, though what clings most clearly to the palate through and through is a bold raisin character, lightly spiced, and bursting with sunshine.
Fans of Cognac will immediately gravitate to this whiskey — and I think it’s a delightful change of pace from the usual fare — though I can understand certainly how it might be seen as too sweet for some.
112 proof.
A- / $500 / chickencockwhiskey.com
Chicken Cock Chanticleer Cognac Barrel Finish
$500
