Whiskey Review: Bardstown Bourbon Company Victoria Pineapple Finish

Introduction

Today, we’re checking out Bardstown Bourbon Company’s Victoria Pineapple Barrel Finish Whiskey, and this is one of the stranger bottles we’ve reviewed in a while.

Bardstown has spent the last few years pushing the boundaries of what a finished whiskey can be, but Victoria Pineapple takes that experimentation noticeably further. We’ve generally avoided flavored whiskey on Film & Whiskey outside of the occasional exception, so this immediately raised a question for us: at what point does an adventurous barrel finish stop being a finished whiskey and start becoming something else?

The whiskey itself starts with some serious age behind it. Bardstown blends 10- and 11-year-old bourbon with 11-year-old rye, then finishes that blend for another 27 months in rum casks associated with Victoria pineapple production. From there, fresh pineapple is actually added to the barrels. The final whiskey is bottled at 106 proof.

Bardstown isn’t trying to hide what it’s doing. The bottle is labeled as whiskey rather than bourbon, and everything about the process is laid out pretty clearly. So we decided not to get too hung up on definitions.

Does throwing pineapple chunks into mature whiskey push the limits of what we normally review? Absolutely.

Does it taste good? That turned out to be the much more interesting question.

Nose

Brad: Guess what, Bob? I got pineapple. But once you get over the pineapple-ness of it all, there’s cinnamon, apple juice, some peanuts going on, and a lot of vanilla. I love this nose. It’s really pleasant.

It’s not dominated by pineapple. I think somebody could smell this and not necessarily go right there. Although once you know the backstory, you’re kind of like, “Sure, there’s pineapple there.” It gets me excited about what is to come. 8/10

Bob: When all the marketing materials lead with one note—pineapple, pineapple, pineapple—you either find it even if it’s not there, or you spend the whole day looking for it and can’t get it as much as you wish you would. I’m kind of in that second camp.

I don’t really get a ton of pineapple on the nose. It has really classic bourbon notes. There’s a ton of baking spice, that dark molasses note, and quite a bit of rye spice.

If I was really pressed to find tropical notes, I might go more papaya than pineapple. There’s a little bit of melon to it as well. I actually think the fact that something with this flavor profile doesn’t lead with pineapple demonstrates how complex it is. 8.5/10

Taste

Brad: This is where the thing really, really shines. David Thomas Tao introduced us to a new category of "crushability," and this is like a 10-out-of-10 crushable whiskey.

The pineapple is there, but it doesn’t overwhelm anything. There’s vanilla, apple juice, a little oat dust, and then the rum influence comes through with this nice cane-sugar sweetness.

There’s also just enough spiciness. I think they really needed that 11-year rye for this to be everything that it is. I really like this whiskey a lot. 9.5/10

Bob: This is where Brad and I are going to split. It tastes like a liqueur to me.

It’s a little too sweet, and I’m very attuned to the flavor of sugar in things. I’m not accusing Bardstown of dumping sugar into the barrel. Whether that sweetness is coming from the pineapple, the finishing process, or somewhere else, it just tastes like it has a high sugar content to me. I think this is basically a high-proof liqueur. And it has its place.

It doesn’t taste like whiskey to me. It tastes like a whiskey liqueur. In that category, it’s really good. So I’m trying to split the difference between “this is a damn good liqueur” and “this doesn’t taste like what I expect whiskey to taste like.” 7.5/10

Brad: I trust your palate. I just don’t think they added sugar to this. When I drink it, it tastes like real whiskey to me. Pineapple is a really sugary fruit. You throw pineapple in there, it’s going to make it sweeter than normal.

Bob: I’m not accusing them of adding sugar. It just tastes like it has a high sugar content, regardless of how it got there.

Brad: “Regardless of how the sugar got there.” You would do great in government, Bob.

Finish

Brad: The finish is really tasty. It comes down a little bit from the palate. There’s still pineapple, but the cinnamon comes through more strongly, and it turns into this nice fresh vanilla bean. 8.5/10

Bob: This is where I keep coming back to the same thing: even if I mentally put it in the high-proof liqueur category, it’s damn good. It’s super flavorful, and it can actually stand on its own as the base spirit of a cocktail.

I would strongly advise that you don’t start dumping more syrups into it, though. You could tip this way too sweet really, really quickly. 8/10

Balance

Brad: I think they nailed the balance of pineapple, whiskey, and spiciness. It is sweet. It’s spicy. It’s got a unique take on whiskey by adding the pineapple. For what they’re trying to do, I think it’s perfectly balanced. 10/10

Bob: I’m still trying to temper what I think it actually is with the fact that it is damn good. That’s the weird thing about this whiskey. I can spend all this time arguing that it drinks more like a liqueur than a traditional whiskey and still admit that what’s in the glass really works. 8.5/10

Value

Victoria Pineapple sells for $139.99 for a 750 ml bottle. That is unmistakably expensive territory, although the age of the component whiskeys and unusually involved finishing process at least help explain how Bardstown got there.

Bob: At $140 for a 750, I’m gonna give it a 7.5/10. This is an expensive whiskey.

I like it a lot. There’s actually part of me that wishes I could get it as a 375 instead, because I don’t know that I would come back to something this distinctive often enough to get through a full bottle.

Brad: I’m at an 8.5/10. I would buy this in a heartbeat if I was in Kentucky. I think this is just a stellar whiskey that expands on what it means to be a whiskey.

Final Scores

Bob: 40/50

Brad: 44.5/50

Average Score: 42.25/50

The funniest part of this entire review is that after spending half of it arguing over whether Victoria Pineapple should even taste this much like a liqueur, Bob still landed at 40/50.

Brad found an exceptionally crushable whiskey where the pineapple, mature bourbon, rye spice, rum influence, vanilla, and sweetness all fit together almost perfectly. Bob thought the sweetness pushed it beyond what he normally expects from whiskey and into something closer to a high-proof liqueur.

But neither of us thought it was bad. Not even close.

At Film & Whiskey, 35/50 is typically where we start recommending that you try a pour at a bar or consider buying a bottle. A 40/50 is great, while 45/50 is excellent.

Victoria Pineapple finishes at an average of 42.25/50, putting it comfortably into great territory and making it one of the stronger whiskeys we’ve reviewed this season.

The $140 price tag will understandably limit the audience, and if you’re sensitive to sweeter whiskey, Bob’s hesitation is worth taking seriously. But if mature bourbon and rye finished in rum barrels with real pineapple sounds even remotely appealing to you, this is one of the more interesting experiments Bardstown has released.

Whatever you want to call it.