This is not the Old No. 7 that I remember from my occasionally foggy college nights. Truth is, this bottle would have never come into my life had it not been for another leap of faith I took on Jack Daniel's Single Barrel Barrel Proof. So impressed was I with that bottle that when I saw a brand new Jack Daniel's Single Barrel variant adorned in a fetching indigo blue label appear on a local retailer's shelf, I immediately grabbed one without hesitation.
So what is the Heritage Barrel release? From a distillate point of view, the Heritage Barrel is identical to Old No. 7 - a 80% corn, 8% rye, and 12% malted barley mash that is column distilled and run through a vat of charcoal (the Lincoln County Process) before being placed in new charred oak barrels for aging. It's here that the Heritage Barrel takes a detour from standard Old No. 7 in both barrel type as well as barrel entry proof. As explained by the distillery:
Unique Barrel Toasting You Won't Find In Any Other Single Barrel
This release celebrates the early craftsmanship of the Jack Daniel Distillery. The whiskey is from uniquely crafted heavy-toast barrels and 100 proof barrel entry proof.
The "Heritage Barrel" expression of Jack Daniel's Single Barrel was crafted with a low temperature, heavy toasted barrel which created a light but rich char full of deep flavor. A lower 100 proof entry proof allows our grain bill to assert itself creating a special Tennessee whiskey with notes of light baking spices, vanilla, and toasted oak with a long, lingering finish, aged to perfection at the top of one of the highest elevated barrelhouses, 1-09, on Coy Hill. What emerges is a flavorful and rich Tennessee Whiskey.
Nose - Honey, gingerbread, mulled fruit/spices, gentle cinnamon and baking spices. The longer in the glass, the more prolific and nostril filling it becomes. What.An.Aroma.
Taste - a bit more spice than sweet. Very gentle oak, zero char here. Warming hug as the sip descends. Proofed perfectly. Lovely alcohol tingle, like a soothing TENS unit for your tongue.
Finish - long, slightly drying, spice first, then some sweetness, then a very mild tannic drying.
Speaking bluntly, not only is Jack Daniel's Heritage Barrel a memorable pour of 2019, but it has easily remained near the top of my ever-changing list of all-time favorite pours. Each pour dazzles and delights and I am hard-pressed to name a single fault in regard to the actual whiskey ... and there's the rub because while the whiskey is sensational, there is a dark reality lurking in the shadows: availability.
Never intended to be an annual release, the folks at Jack Daniel's only produced a finite amount of Heritage Barrel barrels. In the first year of availability, the Fall of 2018, Brown-Forman claimed 200 Heritage Barrels were bottled. While no specific bottle count was given, one can do a little informal analysis - a Jack Daniel's whiskey barrel holds 53.3 gallons of distillate which equates to 201.7624 liters that will produce 269 750ml bottles. That number however assumes no loss to leakage or evaporation. It's estimated that barrels stored on the top floor of maturation warehouses, just as the Heritage Barrels are, lose ~30% of their liquid during the average maturation time of 5-6 years. Applying that correction yields ~188 750 ml bottles from each barrel and a grand total of ~37,600 bottles for the release. Back in 2018, Brown-Forman insinuated those 200 barrels were the entirety of their Heritage Barrel stocks, but refused to confirm or deny when directly asked if that was indeed all there was.
That refusal became moot in the Fall of 2019 when Brown-Forman announced they were bottling another 200 barrels of Heritage Barrel, but that these 200 barrels were indeed the last of the Heritage Barrel program. Jeff Arnett, master distiller at Jack Daniel's, claimed in an interview that originally 400 total Heritage Barrel barrels were filled and it was decided to split the batch across two years to see how one additional year of maturation affected the whiskey.
In my personal experience, I did not encounter a whole lot of Heritage Barrel bottles in either 2018 or 2019. In fact, I never saw a bottle from either year in any major chain liquor store like Total Wine or ABC Fine Wine & Spirits. Every bottle I encountered was in a mom-and-pop liquor store. All of this is to say finding a bottle of Heritage Barrel will almost certainly prove difficult at retail by the time you are reading this. This is a very bittersweet thing. On one hand, I am beyond grateful to have this whiskey on my shelf to enjoy, but on the other, I can never freely enjoy this whiskey. Each potential pour will be carefully scrutinized and debated; I am forever Elaine wondering if I am indeed sponge worthy of the indulgence.
There is one remote hope however - the Heritage Barrel releases were so well received by the whiskey public that perhaps the good folks at Brown-Forman will green-light another run of the program at some point in the future. One can hope. In the meantime, this whiskey serves as a reminder that just as with the amount of time we have on this planet to love, the amount of this whiskey that I have to enjoy is finite. Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? (Sniffs the glass, sips the pour) Yeah, I suspect it is.
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