Barrell Cigar Blend Bourbon Review: Worth $85?

Barrell Cigar Blend Bourbon is worth its roughly $85 price if you enjoy heavily finished whiskey. We see it as an after-dinner specialty pour, made for slow sipping beside a firepit with a cigar. Its sweetness works for us, though anyone chasing classic bourbon oak will want more wood.

At a glance

• Proof: 111.2.
• Whiskey sources: Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee.
• Age: Includes an 18-year-old component. We think the younger whiskey starts around 7.5 years, but we don't know how much of the oldest whiskey is included.
• Finishing casks: Madeira, Armagnac, rum, and Hungarian oak.
• Price: About $85. We paid about $75 on sale through Barrell.
• Tom’s rating: Red on our scale.
• Steve’s rating: Solid double blue on our scale.

Barrell’s blending makes the difference

Barrell is a blender, not a distillery, and this is its first cigar-focused bourbon. Bringing together whiskey from three states and four finishing casks gives it plenty to work with.

Seagrass is a favorite of ours, and Dovetail is delicious. We've also had Barrell releases we didn't enjoy, so the name alone doesn't settle anything. Here, we think the different barrels come together really well.

Nose: sweet tobacco and humidor cedar

The whiskey looks dark in the glass, and the aroma immediately suggests dessert. We get raisins, orange zest, cherry, molasses, and brown sugar beneath that sweetness. We think the rum finish makes itself especially clear here.

There's also a tobacco-leaf and humidor-cedar character that fits the cigar idea. We don't get much traditional oak, including anything we can clearly identify as Hungarian oak. That lighter cedar smell describes the wood influence better.

Palate and finish: molasses, rum raisin, and baking spice

The first sip hits with molasses. It's dense, syrupy, and almost oily, with a coating mouthfeel that gives the flavors room to hang around.

Rum raisin follows, along with a little cherry and darker, jammy fruit. Fig jam is a good way to describe it. The caramelized-sugar sweetness moves into baking spice, giving the sip a sweet-to-spicy balance.

The palate doesn't quite match the nose. The aroma leans toward tobacco and cedar, while the sip pushes molasses and dark fruit forward. At 111.2 proof, it doesn't feel overpowering to us, and that proof helps balance the sweetness.

The dark fruit keeps going through the finish. Molasses, brown sugar, and baking spice linger with it. One of us catches a slight dry wood note, but neither of us gets much classic whiskey oak.

Cigar pairing: Punch Champion comes to mind

Cigar blends can go two ways: pair with a cigar or suggest cigar flavors themselves. We want those deep flavors and aromas, plus enough complexity to keep sipping for a while.

Our reference points include cigar-focused pours from Penelope and Joseph Magnus. We also thoroughly enjoyed what we remember as Buzzard's Roost's first cigar rye blend. That release is no longer made, and there's a newer one available. One of us has also tried RY3, though not its second batch.

For this bottle, a medium- to full-bodied cigar feels like the right direction. Our untested pairing ideas ranged from a vanilla Backwoods to a standard Romeo y Julieta, with Punch Champion getting the strongest nod.

We think the whiskey has enough depth and body to stand up to cigar smoke. We also don't expect it to overpower the cigar. This is a slow pour, with enough going on that we'd rather give it time than rush through a glass.

Value: finished-whiskey fans get the better deal

Tom called this a buy at both $70 and $85. At the regular price, we think the blend delivers enough flavor and complexity to justify the cost.

Where we differ is how much the missing oak matters. Steve wanted more of it before he'd call this a red. Tom also missed that oak, but felt the overall flavor profile overcame the gap.

Tom described it as having a bit of a flavor identity crisis. There are familiar bourbon flavors underneath, but the sweetness takes over. It's richer and sweeter than a classic bourbon profile, and it drinks like a heavily finished bourbon.

That's the right way to judge it. If you enjoy finished bourbons and whiskeys such as Barrell Seagrass and Dovetail, this is worth seeking out for something different. If heavy finishes aren't your thing, we'd avoid it. It doesn't deliver the oak-forward experience some bourbon drinkers want.

A cigar-side revisit could change our ratings

We want another pour with a cigar before we settle the pairing question. That follow-up could change our ratings, especially for a bottle we'd save for a relaxed Friday night rather than make an everyday sipper.