This Bourbon Tastes Like a Ready-Made Old Fashioned, No Mixing Required

(Photo: Oaklore)

Pour this bourbon in a glass and you can skip the sugar and bitters. Simply poured neat or over ice, Old Fashioned Finished Four Grain Bourbon tastes exactly like an Old Fashioned.

Oaklore Story Series Old Fashioned Finished Four Grain Bourbon is a limited release from the Charlotte, N.C., distillery, which launched in 2017. It was released in spring 2026 at $89.95 per 750-milliliter bottle.

The bourbon is a small batch blend of 6-year-old barrels from Oaklore’s sister distilleries in North Carolina and Kentucky. It’s distilled from a mashbill is 70% corn, 10% rye, 10% wheat and 10% malted barley. The whiskey was aged a minimum of six years in new, 53-gallon American white oak barrels, then finished for 18 months in barrels that previously aged Oaklore’s Old Fashioned Cocktail Mixer. It’s non-chill filtered and bottled at 98 proof (49% ABV). Thomas Bogan is the master distiller.

Retail distribution is limited to North Carolina and South Carolina. The bottle ships nationally from Oaklore’s website.

How Does it Taste?

The nose is very sweet and reads Old Fashioned right away: cane sugar, maraschino cherry, plum and Angostura bitters.

The palate is quite viscous for the proof, with brown sugar, cherry, plum, cinnamon and pepper. The medium-length finish starts with cinnamon, clove and gingerbread, then moves into Demerara, plum and tobacco.

It’s rare to find a bourbon finished in a cocktail barrel, and this one actually tastes like a (damn good) ready-made Old Fashioned.

Click here to read our full review, including scoring and complete tasting notes.

For more information or to order, visit oakloredistilling.com.