Pineapple Whiskey? Bardstown Bourbon Co.’s Latest Release Is a Wild Experiment

(Photo: Bardstown Bourbon Co.)

Bardstown Bourbon Company is bringing an unusual tropical flavor to American whiskey with its latest limited release, a bourbon-and-rye blend finished in Caribbean-sourced pineapple rum casks.

The Kentucky distiller announced Tuesday the launch of Victoria Pineapple Barrel Finish Whiskey, a new expression that explores how barrel influence and maturation can create tropical fruit notes without, as the company put it in a news release, taking “shortcuts.”

The release is the first installment in Bardstown Bourbon Co.’s new Finishing Series, an evolution of the brand’s limited-edition collaboration program. Available exclusively in Kentucky, the whiskey will hit shelves July 24 in extremely limited quantities.

“The goal was never to make whiskey taste like pineapple,” said Dan Callaway, master blender at Lofted Spirits, Bardstown Bourbon Co.’s parent company. “The goal was to understand what made these barrels so special in the first place.”

Victoria Pineapple Barrel Finish begins with a custom blend of 10- and 11-year-old bourbons and 11-year-old rye before being matured in Caribbean-sourced pineapple rum casks. The rum previously held in those barrels gained attention for incorporating Victoria pineapples directly during maturation — a process Bardstown Bourbon Co. sought to replicate rather than simply use the casks as a finishing vessel.

After 27 months of finishing, Bardstown Bourbon Co. added fresh pineapple to the barrels, mirroring the rum production method that inspired the project.

“Finishing with staves gave us the balance that helped integrate the pineapple character without losing the depth and complexity of the whiskey itself,” Callaway added.

The base blend is 40% 11-year-old Indiana bourbon, 40% 10-year-old Indiana bourbon and 20% 11-year-old Indiana rye whiskey distilled from a mashbill of 95% rye and 5% malted barley. The bourbon components are both distilled from 75% corn, 21% rye and 4% malted barley.

The result is a 106-proof whiskey featuring notes of tropical fruit, rye spice, allspice, pineapple, cherry, toasted oak, vanilla crème and toffee, according to the distillery.

The whiskey takes its name from the Victoria pineapple, a variety prized for its sweetness and aroma and historically connected with rum production in Barbados.

Victoria Pineapple Barrel Finish Whiskey will be available only in Kentucky, including the Bardstown Bourbon Company distillery and Louisville tasting room, beginning Friday, July 24. The release is limited to fewer than 350 9-liter cases and carries a suggested retail price of $139.99.

The bottle also marks the debut of Bardstown Bourbon’s updated Finishing Series packaging, which will feature original artwork for each release. Louisville artist Margaret Archambault created the artwork for the inaugural expression.

While this is a distinctive and unusual whiskey release, it feels similar in spirit (no pun intended) to another recent release from Lofted Spirits: Green River Honey Finished Bourbon, a bourbon finished with honey added directly to the barrel. With a Green River honey finish in May and a Bardstown Bourbon Co. Pineapple finish in July, it will be interesting to see if Lofted continues the pattern of putting out these nontraditional releases that sit somewhere between a flavored whiskey and a traditional whiskey.

Curious how this wildly experimental whiskey turned out? Stay tuned for The Daily Pour’s review. We have a sample en route and will have a review up ASAP once the bottle is in our reviewer’s hands.