I only recently tried Rare Character products for the first time. I’m sure I sipped on one or two in the bourbon-sharing group I go to every couple weeks, but then the shop behind the shares got a Rare Character store pick in December…and apparently at least a couple other stores in the area got similar store picks at the exact same time. I ended up buying two of them and thought I would do a side-by-side comparison between the two.
First, the specifics…both of these bottles are part of Rare Character’s Single Bottle Series and both come from the HRK coded bottles with the yellow wax on the top. HRK is short for “High Rye Kelvin” and is an Indiana distillate using 36% bourbon in the mash bill, along with 60% corn, and 4% malted barley.
Rather than play favorites, I decided to taste these two bottles in order of proof…lowest first…which brings us to “Hilltop Bottleshop.” This bourbon is from barrel HRK-151 and was aged for 11 years and 3 months. It was bottled at 119.10 proof for the Hilltop Bottleshop in Hixson, TN.
I definitely got a lot of charred oak aroma on the nose, along with some toasted caramel and burnt sugar aroma. Digging deeper you will find some sweeter notes of brown sugar and vanilla, but there’s a lot of oak to get through. Taking a sip, I was very much delighted by the sweetness on the tip of the tongue…notes of cherry and brown sugar were there before the mid-palate was taken over by oak, black pepper, and a little cinnamon. The peppery notes continued on the finish and just lingered and lingered and lingered. Another sip brought some more fruitiness to the party.
“Heavy Is The Crown” is a selection by the Chattanooga Firefighters for Signal Mountain Wine and Spirits at the base of Signal Mountain in Chattanooga. It is also 11 years, 3 months, with barrel HRK-178 being bottled at 122.44 proof. Despite being the same whiskey left in barrels for the same amount of time, this one didn’t seem quite as oaky…don’t get me wrong, it was still very present on the nose, but it just seemed a little toned down. That allowed the brown sugar, vanilla, and cherry notes to come out a little easier. The difference in body and mouthfeel was substantial between these two, as well. This “Crown” had a much more silky texture and just absolutely coats the mouth. On the tip of my tongue this one had a much more caramel note, with a strong oak presence from the beginning. The peppery heat wasn’t quite as powerful on this one, although it did linger just like the other one. “Crown” does seem to have a little more complexity and that just goes to show how two different barrels from the same batch, aging probably not too far away from each other for the same amount of time can be similar…but very different.
