Penelope Bourbon touts the Architect Series as a “blueprint for the future of precision lending,” as they combine their straight bourbon whiskey with French oak staves. They collaborate with Tonnellerie Radoux, the market leader in making barrels in France, selecting each stave using their “state of the art OakScan process to construct a truly memorable flavor profile.” My first bottle of this series happens to be “Build Number 12,” which is bottled at 52 ABV (104 proof).
There is no age statement on the Penelope Architect bottle, but the relatively light amber color leads me to believe it’s close to 4 years, the minimum it can be as a “straight bourbon whiskey” without an age statement. This is a non-chill filtered whiskey, leaving the whiskey oily and full-flavored. Sticking my nose into my whiskey glass, I picked up layers of oak (American and French, I imagine), as well as notes of candied apple and vanilla.
The sip doesn’t start off as sweet as you might imagine after getting that apple note up front, but there is a bit of a brown sugar to it before it glides into baking spice and lots of oak. To be clear, I don’t think this is “over oaked” by any means, but there is definitely a strong presence for a 4-year old whiskey. The finish tended toward spicy, although it was hard to tell if it was proof, rye in the mashbill, or the oak aging. Whatever it was…it was really nice! Overall, I really enjoyed this Penelope Architect and I’ll probably buy it fairly regularly in the future. I do have one question if anyone from Penelope reads this…does it always use the same base bourbon in each build? I think it would be very interesting to take the Penelope Wheated and use that as a base for the French oak staves…ala Maker’s 46. Just a thought.
