Tullahoma, TN’s George Dickel, officially (but less famously) known as Cascade Hollow Distilling, occupies an interesting, unique place in the American whiskey world. Like other Tennessee contemporaries such as Brown-Forman’s Jack Daniels, they choose to use the so called Lincoln County Process of charcoal filtration, and they also choose to label their product as “Tennessee whisky,” (with the U.K. spelling of the word) despite the fact that many of their core products could legally be called bourbon. They’ve been a major U.S. brand for decades, but not always one afforded a ton of respect. But all of that has changed in recent years, for two reasons: Sourced Dickel whiskeys, and innovation on the homefront.
Sourced whiskeys are the way that many whiskey geeks have likely come to appreciate Dickel. The company’s large production means they’ve had plenty of product to sell to other non-distiller producers (NDPs) in the last decade, and the relative affordability of their whiskey meant that they were a favored target of those younger companies looking to acquire decently aged product at a good price. Like MGP in Indiana, this made Dickel something of a powerhouse in the sourced whiskey world, to the point that whiskey geeks often assume that Dickel is involved whenever a blend states it contains whiskey from Tennessee. In our recent review of Pursuit United Bourbon, for instance, I noted that the team behind that whiskey went out of their way to say that their own sourced TN whiskey was not from Dickel, showing that they thought this would be the assumption. Other well-regarded sourced blends such as Barrell or Sweetens Cove, meanwhile, have made good use of Dickel spirits and continued to improve their reputation.
At the same time, the ownership at Cascade Hollow Distilling/Dickel presumably (and understandably) wanted more credit for the good reviews their whiskey was getting in other people’s bottles, so they began innovating with new brands of their own. The version of George Dickel Bottled-in-Bond released in 2019 and 2020 did exactly that—these 13 and 11-year-old releases helped whiskey drinkers reassess their perception of Dickel, and drew very positive reviews. All in all, it’s made Dickel whiskey a much hotter commodity now than it was say, a decade ago.
It made sense, then, for the company to introduce some premiumized brands to take advantage of this new interest. Thus was born the Cascade Moon Whisky series from Cascade Hollow distiller Nicole Austin. The first edition was released in the fall of 2020 and was an 11-year-old bottling that was “inspired by, and features similar tasting notes found in a gose-style beer.” That certainly sounds interesting, but we didn’t have a chance to try that particular bottling. What we do have is the newly released Cascade Moon Edition No. 2, and I’m telling you right now: This one is a gem. In fact, although the year is still new, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is one of the best whiskey releases of 2021.
In terms of profile, this is a substantially different release than Cascade Moon Edition No. 1. The company describes it as “curated around the first barrel of Tennessee whisky filtered after the distillery returned from shutdown in 2003,” and the overall batch size is apparently under 20 barrels. All of those barrels were at least 16 years of age, meaning that this is a very mature batch of Dickel whiskey indeed. It was bottled at a relatively modest 45% ABV (90 proof), in notably attractive sand-blasted ceramic bottles and hand-printed labels. As you’d likely expect from its appearance, this carries a steep price tag, with an MSRP of $250.