Barrell Craft Spirits Grey Label Dovetail 750ml

The first Barrell Dovetail, which came out in 2018, was an excellent cask-finished whiskey from Louisville’s Barrell Craft Spirits. But the new BCS Gray Label Dovetail ups the ante on the original, using rarer casks of older whiskey to create something even more special.

The whiskey in this new blend comes from two countries, the US and Canada, and while the sources are familiar the end result is unique due to the particular barrels selected and extensive cask finishing process. The exact breakdown of the blend isn’t revealed, but the components are bourbons from Indiana and Tennessee and rye whiskey from Canada that are aged up to two decades in barrels. Each component is finished separately in a different type of cask before blending: rum, port and Cabernet wine barrels from Dunn Vineyards in Napa Valley. While each of these cask types has been used a hundred times before to finish a hundred different whiskeys, it’s the specific combination of liquid and managed finishing process that makes Gray Label Dovetail stand out.