Old Dominick Bottled in Bond Tennessee Whiskey

OLD DOMINICK TENNESSEE WHISKEY
Bottled in Bond, Batch 4 (2023)

MASH BILL – 75% corn, 13% rye, 12% malted barley

PROOF – 100

AGE – 4 years

DISTILLERY – Old Dominick Distillery

PRICE – $71 (includes tax and shipping)

WORTH BUYING? – Yes

Uncorked and tasted in The Year of No Buying (The what? 🔗 here.)

My intro to Old Dominick was a 2020 release of their Huling Station Small Batch Bourbon. Back then they were still contract-distilling their whiskey with MGP, using their own mash bill and yeast. The company’s inventive master distiller, Alex Castle, created a Tennessee whiskey that tasted nothing like Jack Daniel’s or George Dickel, themselves the dominant definers of the “Tennessee Whiskey” taste profile. I was very impressed.

I followed that bottle up with a single barrel of Huling Station, selected by Seelbach’s. Darker and richer than the standard release, this bottle really sold me on Alex Castle’s tastes and what she was doing with Old Dominick. The balance of familiar bourbon flavors and new variations was perfect. In particular, Huling Station had a complex minty through-line that was very strong. Rather than overwhelming the whole, this mint emphasis was in good balance with caramel, doughy pastry, chocolate, and a variety of spice notes like tea, licorice, and cinnamon.

Other Huling Station offerings followed. What I came to appreciate most about Castle was indeed how she managed to create whiskeys with one foot firmly in recognizable traditions and the other in something brighter and more contemporary. Huling Station bourbons did not conjure leather chairs, fires in the hearth, or monocle and mustache studded Rockefellers puffing their cigars. They offered the classic bourbon flavors, but in a way that conjured more contemporary settings—outdoor spring and summer events, gatherings of friends, sunny blue skies, optimism, energy.

So as Castle weened Old Dominick off its excellent contract-distilled products and began to release the in-house stuff, I worried of course that the great panache I loved of Huling Station might get traded out for something more overtly “crafty,” meaning rougher, greener, more new-make and less deep. It was with this minor furrow in my brow that I picked up a bottle of Old Dominick Bottled in Bond Tennessee Whiskey Batch 4.

The label was reassuring. The design was elegant and old-timey in a similar way to Huling Station, balancing the classic and the contemporary. But more importantly, it stated all the right things. Non-chill filtered. Mash bill listed right on the front. The barrel char level. The year of distillation. Barrel entry proof. Batch size. Age. All of this conveyed with economy and simplicity, demonstrating that it ain’t that hard. Legacy brands, with your habitual secrecy, take note! Transparency is a key to the contemporary whiskey fan’s heart, and loyalty.

So all of that is great. But how is the whiskey itself?

Here we are, nearing six weeks after uncorking and a handful of pours into the bottle. These brief notes were taken using a traditional Glencairn.

COLOR – at once murky and glowing amber-oranges

NOSE – tart apricot dashed with bright cinnamons, brown sugar crystals, dusty oak in spring, dried lemon wheels, crystalizing honey

TASTE – strong vanilla and caramel right up front, then a wave of oak and oak tannin, granular and syrupy textures sloshing in and out of one another, ending in a burst of all the notes offered by the nose

FINISH – again very like the nose, now grounded in a simmering warmth that lingers at the back of the throat, with an almost too sharp honey note, and the granular textures holding sway

OVERALL – a bright and spicy whiskey

I’m struck in particular by the splashy mix of granular and syrupy textures, how the one holds up the oak and spices and the other carries forward the sweeter fruit and candy notes.

The granular aspect is stronger than I’d like it to be. I love textures in whiskey that lean wetter—syrupy, oily, silky, etcetera… Spices tend to be used in food as accents, and here the granular texture pushes the spice notes more forwardly than I’d prefer. Or maybe the spice notes are creating that sense of texture. Either way, at the price I paid I want to like it much more than I do. All of that, in combination with what I’m describing as a too-sharp honey note on the finish, leaves me slightly unsatisfied by the sum total experience, like when a blurry buzzing fly makes it into the corner of an otherwise clear and beautiful photo.

That said, this is quality whiskey. No question. I may not enjoy it 100% on its own, but I do enjoy it. It’s like a genuinely fun and upbeat friend who is occasionally a bit loud. Very forgivable. In cocktails I have no doubt this whiskey will do exceedingly well. The range of sweet, spicy, and dry notes on offer are complex yet loosely gathered, allowing room for vermouths and bitters and sweeteners and the like to join forces with the base whiskey.

All in all, another in a series of achievements for Alex Castle. As I write this it’s just been announced that Castle is leaving Old Dominick for new opportunities in her home state of Kentucky. So someone there is lucky to be getting a truly innovative whiskey maker. I hope whomever picks up where Castle left off at Old Dominick will at least continue in her spirit of respecting familiar tradition while moving things forward with distinction. It’s a wonderful balance that not every young distillery manages to achieve.

Cheers!