There's something honest about a single barrel bourbon bottled at cask strength. No blending to smooth out the edges, no water added to bring it down to a polite 40%. What you're getting is exactly what came out of one specific barrel, and with Driftless Glen 5 Year Old Single Barrel Bourbon at a hefty 60% ABV, that's a bold statement of intent.
For those keeping score at home, 60% ABV puts this at 120 proof — firmly in barrel-proof territory. Under American whiskey law, bourbon must enter the barrel at no more than 125 proof (62.5% ABV), which means this bottle has barely shed any strength during its five years of maturation. That tells you something about the warehousing conditions and the relatively young age — there hasn't been decades of evaporation pulling the proof down. What it also means is you're tasting something very close to the raw character of the distillate and the wood interaction, unfiltered by dilution.
What to Expect
At five years old, this is a bourbon that sits in an interesting sweet spot. It's old enough that the barrel has had real time to work its magic — you'll have proper colour development and genuine oak influence rather than the thin, grainy quality you sometimes get from bourbons rushed to market after two or three years. But it's also young enough to retain serious punch and energy. This isn't a mellow sipper that fades into the background. At 120 proof, it demands your attention.
The single barrel designation is worth paying attention to here. Every bottle comes from one barrel, which means there's genuine variation between batches. The bottle you buy might drink slightly differently from the one your mate picked up last month. That's part of the appeal — it's bourbon with individual character rather than a blended house style designed to taste identical every time.
At £79.95, you're paying a fair price for a cask-strength single barrel. It's not cheap, but when you consider that you can add your own water to bring this down to whatever proof you prefer — effectively getting more drinks per bottle than a pre-diluted 40% expression — the value proposition actually holds up well.
The Verdict
I'm giving Driftless Glen 5 Year Old Single Barrel Bourbon a 7.6 out of 10. It's a confident, full-throttle bourbon that doesn't apologise for what it is. The combination of single barrel selection and barrel-proof bottling gives you something genuinely individual, and the five-year age statement, while modest, is enough to ensure proper maturity. This is a bourbon for people who want to taste the real thing — uncut, unblended, and unapologetic. It loses a few points simply because at this price bracket, you're competing with some seriously established cask-strength bourbons, but on its own terms, this delivers.
Best Served
With this much proof, I'd strongly suggest trying it three ways. First, neat with a few minutes to breathe in the glass — let that alcohol integrate. Second, with a few drops of water, which at 60% ABV will genuinely open things up and reveal layers that the raw proof might be masking. And third — and this is the bartender in me talking — this is an absolute weapon in an Old Fashioned. A barrel-proof bourbon means your cocktail won't get drowned out by the sugar and bitters. Use a good demerara syrup, two dashes of Angostura, a fat orange peel, and let the Driftless Glen do the heavy lifting. At 120 proof, it can handle the dilution from the ice and still come through with authority.
