Booker’s Rye Review | The Daily Pour
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94Excellent

Booker’s Rye

Rye Beam
  • Distiller

    Beam

  • Bottler

    Beam

  • ABV

    68.1%

  • Age

    13 Years

  • Price $200+

Booker's Rye is a highly celebrated and limited release from Beam Suntory released in 2016. It's a 16-year-old barrel-proof rye whiskey.

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Aggregated Reviews
  • Raided Score: 92
  • The Daily Pour
  • By t8ke
  • This is a fantastic rye. I'll be straight, I like it a lot. I'd drink it all of the time if I could.
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  • Raided Score: 95
  • Drinkhacker
  • By Christopher Null
  • Have we arrived at Peak Rye? You better believe it. Does it matter? As long as the whiskey turns out this amazingly: No.
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  • Raided Score: 92
  • Whisky Advocate
  • By Fred Minnick
  • Alas, a heavy bite hides much, needing water to open up. A drop adds complexity, spice, vanilla, chocolate, and licorice.
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  • Raided Score: 95
  • The Whiskey Wash
  • By Savannah Weinstock
  • For rye first-timers, Booker’s certainly appears to have smashed rye out of the park. Congratulations to them, and to whoever out there can snag a sip of this wonderful rye before it’s gone.
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  • Raided Score: 95
  • Breaking Bourbon
  • By Jordan
  • I can only hope that Booker laid down a lot more rye barrels than Beam is letting on and that we’ll see one or two more releases of this extra aged rye as a result.
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  • Raided Score: 96
  • The Whiskey Jug
  • By Josh Peters
  • I understand that it would be a large, long term, undertaking to make Booker’s Rye a new project for the distillery, but its a project I think they could undertake and do quite well within the future.
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  • Raided Score: 94
  • WhiskyCast
  • By Mark Gillespie
  • This one-of-a-kind Rye whiskey comes from a special batch distilled from a unique mashbill created by the late Booker Noe in 2003, shortly before his death the following year, and is bottled at 68.1% ABV…uncut and unfiltered as Booker demanded it.
  • Read Full Review

Raided Score is a conversion from an external site's score, to our in house uniform scoring system. Please see the FAQ for more.

House Review
  • Nose:

    Spicy clove, oak, maple and some faint banana bread. Doughy, molasses and oddly creamy. Less oaky than expected due to the age but its still there in force.

  • Taste:

    Sweet and thick. Maple, clove, fruity cream. Very sweet, even with the wood influence. Little hot but surprisingly mellow for 130+ proof.

  • Finish:

    Long, complex. The heat grows, but not to unreasonable intensity. Very sweet, oaky and toffee forward.

  • Overall:

    This is a fantastic rye. Ill be straight, I like it a lot. Id drink it all of the time if I could. To me, I still think THH is the king of non-unicorn rye, because that profile just gets me going but this is a close contender. The mouthfeel is great and the flavors deliver well. I disagree with Murray on this being the best whiskey of 2016 but its certainly a good pick. If it was priced at $100 or below, and was actually accessible, Id pick up a bottle or two a year. But since the secondary has gone bonkers, I'm also content to leave it to the freaks. I'm rating this a Rank 8 - very good. On par, to some, with THH but I think this lags behind, just a hair.

  • Score:

    92

  • By t8ke
  • Our in house critic rates spirits on a scale of 0-10 (10 best) and is aggregated the same as external sources