Broken Barrel Whiskey Co.has introduced Honey Smoke Reserva, which follows last year’s popular Honey Smoke Rye release.

This new offering features a Kentucky-distilled American Whiskey aged for six years, finished for five months using 50% Honey barrel staves and 50% Texas Sotol barrel staves, and bottled at 110-proof (55% ABV). The result is a whiskey with a deep, earthy, and smoky complexity.

Approximately 1,900 bottles of Broken Barrel Honey Smoke Reserva are now available online at BrokenBarrelWhiskey.com and Seelbachs.com, and in select retail stores in: CA, IN, KY, MN, OK, and SC. The expression features a mash bill of 99% corn and 1% malted barley and an Oak Bill (the combination of staves from different types of barrels used in each expression) of 50% Honey barrel staves and 50% Texas Sotol barrel staves. The limited-release expression has a suggested retail price of $79.

Broken Barrel’s goal is to produce whiskeys (in partnership with Green River Distilling in Owensboro, Kentucky) which showcase the impact a non-traditional barrel finishing practice has on flavor. While most whiskey is aged in barrels and then bottled, Seth Benhaim, Founder of Broken Barrel, believed that there was a missed opportunity in traditional barrel finishing – namely the reliance on one type of barrel used to finish one type of whiskey.

He created Broken Barrel to expand the barrel finishing concept, involving not only broken barrel staves (vs. intact barrels), but also the combination of multiple barrel types all finishing aged bourbon in tandem. Once Broken Barrel whiskey ages for a minimum of two years, barrels are carefully selected, dumped, and batched in a large tank. The broken barrel staves from multiple different kinds of casks are then added to further age and finish the whiskey.

Broken Barrel’s core whiskey portfolio including Americana (whiskey), Heresy (rye), Small Batch (bourbon), and Cask Strength (bourbon), the latter of which was named Best Kentucky Finished Bourbon at the 2023 World Whisky Awards. Additionally, in the spirit of experimentation, Broken Barrel regularly issues special releases which allows the team to further flex its creative muscles and incorporate barrel staves from various combinations of unique casks sourced from all over the world. To date, Benhaim has purchased whiskey barrels from over a dozen countries and has released nearly 30 unique whiskeys with varying Oak Bills. Past limited releases have incorporated various types of barrel staves including Barbadian Rum, French Oak, Cognac, Armagnac, Islay, Maple, Mizunara, and Amontillado.

For more information, visit www.brokenbarrelwhiskey.com.