Aging whiskey in red wine barrels isn’t as common compared to beers, or even to sherry casking, but as we’ve seen before with Blood Oak, the effect is solid enough that more should give it a shot. Luckily Agitator makes wine, so them doing this makes – well a lot of sense. The question though is whether this soak in an old barrel has done anything to improve the whiskey, or just made it a slight shade of red.
The finishing in wine has brought something to the table, but akin to a potluck it’s not clear if this dish is going to be beloved and gone by the 2nd hour. The whiskey itself has some nice sweetness, but if there was a big issue here it’s that despite being in red wine barrels you don’t get those deep tannin(?) flavors you’d get with most wines, it feels too vinegary, too sherry like. While Blood Oak also had problems where the wine was a bit too gone into the cognac territory, this conversely feels young?
What they Say: “Bottle Back: Not everyone appreciates an agitator, but we wear the banner proudly. We like to innovate, stir things up, try new methods to continuously improve our products. Disruption is in our DNA because sometimes it takes an agitator to create something great.
Agitator is Straight Bourbon Whiskey finished in red wine oak barrels. The wine barrels lend a uniqueness to the bourbon by adding notes of dark berry, espresso, and chocolate.
Bottle Front: Finished in Red Wine Barrels
Bold & complex for a distinctly unique flavor.
Here’s to the rule breakers, the rabble rousers, the thieves, and the troublemakers…”
Taste: 7.0 – You get that nice sweetness at the beginning which seems to be a mix of caramel and berry flavors so it doesn’t feel sugary or saccharine. This is certainly one of the best aspects about this whiskey.
Aftertaste: 5.0 – The backend gets a bit of smoke, more wood though. It’s also here you get that sherry like flavoring you expected from the aroma. It’s overall nice, but nothing really stellar or worth some of the pain and effort.
Burn/Smooth: 4.0 – You would think some wine would mellow this the fuck out – don’t. In fairness for slightly overproof it seems to be lessening the blow somewhat, but smooth is not how this goes down. Over a few sips it improves a bit (we typically account for this, but it’s markedly different here.)
Aroma: 6.0 – There’s a few components here. The first being a typical sort of bourbon smell, the second a slight bit of ‘heat’ from the small amount of overproofing, and finally the wine which honestly comes off closer to a sherry aroma than say a cab or a zin. The resulting effect is – okay. Like it doesn’t smell terribly delicious, it’s distinctive – we’ll give them that.
Honesty: 3.5 – It’s that last line, that parting statement on the front of the bottle – just sticks in our craw. It just reads more like some corporate nonsense to play up the brand of ‘agitator’ and falls flat. Overall the text feels a bit wanky w/o that line. The look is interesting, but there’s problems there too between the faux-burned paper look and the odd wax seal. Overall it just feels wrong.
Mixability: 5.83
W/ Rocks: 6.5 – Well there’s no burn, and if we’re honest it really does what a whiskey should do on rocks – transform. The result is a bit more melded with the wood and wine flavors, the sweetness lessened (sadly), but the harshness removed entirely. You do get more sherry again than some other red wine like flavor, but it’s not full-on so it doesn’t disagree with your tastebuds.
Whiskey and Coke: 4.0 – Given the sweetness it provides the expectation here is the sugary tasting cola would be – too much. It’s not though; however there is an issue. Namely that the flavors of the casking here do little to improve the cocktail, as such we decided to add the next one to understand this bourbon’s usage, but be warned – cola ain’t it.
Bourbon Old Fashioned: 7.0 – We will advise after some testing, don’t add sugar, because honestly you don’t need too. That little bit from the whiskey and the cherry juice is enough to handle the bitters and orange. While it may not compare to some of the better (mostly rye) old fashioned, this makes a damn good one. The unique flavor of the wine lends itself to this more old-world style cocktail.
Value: 5.0 – This is interesting – because initial thought would be whether this is honestly worth buying at all. The answer is not really? Sure it has some good points, but overall there are certainly things that work better. However we also need to contend with the fact the price here is really reasonable. They could have EASILY been more up their own ass and charged 10 or even 20 dollars more and maybe gotten away with it. As such we’ve given them a pass – you get a unique whiskey neat that can be used in a cocktail and it’s pretty cheap for such a different sort of whiskey.
Google Shop Average: $25
Website: https://www.agitatorwines.com/
Reviewer Scores:
BuffaloJern: 5.0
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Metric Score: 36.33/70 |+| Metric Average: 5.19 |+| Reviewer Average: 5.0
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Final Thoughts: It feels a bit funny to respond to something that want’s to be innovative, disruptive, and agitative (not a word) with a basic middle of the road score, but let’s face it – we never give a shit what anyone says they are. Combine that with the overall feeling on this whiskey and while yes there are some points that make it unique (by virtue of not many folks throwing their whiskey into a wine barrel to see what comes out the other side) there are also quite a bit of faults here. So the good – weighs out the bad. The result? Well like Blood Oak showed us – maybe it’s worth whiskies using some wine barrels, because there might be some that really work there.
