The Story

In Michigan’s lower peninsula, there’s a city that’s known for beautiful beaches, wineries and cherries: Traverse City. Well, to be fair, the greater region around Traverse City produces these fine indulgences too, but the main spot is the hub at TC. It’s always a great place to vacation for a couple days if you’re a Michigander (and even if you’re not).

In the summer, Traverse City holds the annual National Cherry Festival to promote the region and the products which they produce – namely, cherries. In conjunction and in celebration with this festival, TC Whiskey Co. releases a Whiskeyfest kit that showcases the cherry-making excellence that they feature in their products. as part of the kit, they include their cocktail cherries, their whiskey highball (cherry seltzer), a Glencairn, a 200ml bottle of their American Cherry Edition Whiskey, and last (but not least) their Barrel Proof Cherry Whiskey.

While we missed the boat on the Whiskeyfest kit, we were lucky enough to grab the 750ml bottle that was subsequently sold in their tasting room and their outpost in metro Detroit.

Coming in at 109.4 proof, TC Whiskey’s Barrel Proof Cherry batch 001 is a 5+ years aged, straight bourbon whiskey that is infused with Montmorency cherries. So let’s pop the cork on this one and see what it has to offer.

Nose

The nose has aromas of dark cherry, cinnamon, cherry cobbler with the crumbled brown sugar on top.

Palate

The palate is fairly spicy throughout but chock full of sweet, fruit notes. Off the bat we detected brown sugar and vanilla, clove, and of course an obvious cherry note which is rounded off with cinnamon spice

Finish

For the finish, there’s a bit of milk chocolate, with baking spice and maintaining those strong cherry notes.

Verdict

Our 750ml bottle of Barrel Proof Cherry set us back $84.99 which is a bit expensive in general, but not so high for a barrel proof, limited release bottle. Because of those reasons, we’re giving this one a ‘buy’ rating and setting the reasonable price range from that $85 figure up to $95. 

We already like to make Cherry Old Fashioned’s using TC Whiskey’s American Cherry and we are excited to try it out with the Barrel Proof Cherry expression as well. It has plenty of bourbon character and does exactly what you expect of it, in delivering those wonderful cherry notes.

Overall, we’re going to give TC Whiskey’s Barrel Proof Cherry limited release an 8.0 out of 10.

Do you own this bottle? Then surely you’ll want to add it to your inventory using our web app! It’s free to use. Sign up here to get a handle on that unruly home bar.

Cheers friends!