Featured at World Whisky Day 2021: Branch & Barrel Distilling was founded in 2015 by friends Ryan Morgan, Scott Freund and Tom Sielaff after years of aging new make whiskey with different woods. One of them was wood from a plum tree, and was perhaps the one that finally pushed them into getting the distillery off the ground for real. The base spirit is a bourbon mash with high barley but some of their offerings are not aged in virgin oak barrels and thus do not meet the regulatory requirements to call it bourbon. The Branch & Barrel Plumwood is matured entirely in plum wood barrels and made in very small batches.
Distillery: Branch & Barrel
Region: Foreign
Age: NAS
Strength: 50%
Price: $49.99
Maturation: Plum wood casks
Barrel: Batch 3
Location: Centennial, CO
Nose: Port, rose, cream, vanilla, perfume, char, plum, chocolate, tobacco
Palate: Dark fruit, wine, spice, cordial chocolate, perfume, Christmas plum pudding
Finish: Spice, plum, smoke, vanilla
Comments: A few drops of water and oxidization help shift the elements but it is entirely up to exploration and preference. We think it’s all beautiful.
Adam – If you were to tell me that the base spirit of this Branch & Barrel Plumwood was a high-barley bourbon, I’m not sure I’d believe it without receipts. But wholly gods of whiskey, does this spirit check the box for unique in all the right ways for me. Everything about it is such a pleasant surprise. For being young, it shouldn’t be so complex. Like, Christmas complex, where the more you delve into it the more you bring back out. The Plumwood does so much, bringing out all these beautiful and luxuriant senses on the nose. I could just smell it all day. What’s even better is that the complexity doesn’t lose a whole lot of steam once you actually taste it, only shifting slightly in manner. Yet this isn’t attempting to smother you with a feather boa. The dark fruits, perfume, chocolate and wine notes are countered by some light char, fresh tobacco, and a dash of spice. Not enough to ruin the evening but enough to let those creamy aspects shine forth without overstaying their welcome, the spice finally blossoming enough on the finish to close out the show with a flourish of smoke and plum on the end. Dare I say it, but this is a mid-winter mirror to the high summer splendor of the Brenne Estate Cask, if you can believe it.
Kate – This whisky on the nose signals your brain that it’s going to taste something amazing. It is really evocative to me. The sensory feeling of the wood and how it smells and tastes. It feels like I’m making cordon bleu in the crunchiest place in the world. It brings me to that place. And Victorian princess pudding!
Like I’m making cordon bleu in the crunchiest place in the world.
Henry – A beautiful and complex nose of dark stone fruit, vanilla, oak, and Cavendish with a hint of wintergreen pipe tobacco. Perfume undertones blossom in the transition to the palate, with fruitwood underpinning the warm florals and sweet fruitiness, which characterizes the generously long finish. A bit of bite on the mid-palate is the only rough spot on an otherwise fascinating and unique spirit that could just benefit from a little more time in the cask.
Bill – The Plumwood strikes that perfect balance between the sweet and the bitter unlike any whiskey I’ve ever had. It does so perfectly. Wow. So unique. When I taste it, I get this wood fire, ashen, burnt taste. A little acrid, in kind of the right way. Acrid up front backed by sweet. It knows what it is and doesn’t apologize for what it is.
Ben – I love it. I think it’s great. I’m still getting that cherry vanilla pipe tobacco. It makes me want to take up smoking again.
