Wine Barrel -- No, Bourbon Barrel Tincture

A few weeks back, maybe even a month ago, I procured what I thought were red wine barrel chips for a tincture. In reviewing the purchase, and after announcing to the world on my FB page or on Instagram that I was putting together a wine barrel chip tincture, I discovered that what I had was actually bourbon barrel chips! Score! Nothing wrong with wine barrel chips, but a bourbon barrel is better, and sometime in the future, there will be a big Mason jar of wine barrel tincture stewing on the Shelf of Perfumery Wonders, just not now.

BBT, the bourbon barrel tincture, has been basking in its lovely bourbon-y juices for a while now, and today it has been evaluated. From the jar, it smells like watered-down whiskey. I've never been a huge fan of whiskey's flavor, but I've always loved its beautiful pushy scent. Thus far, BBT is how whiskey smells in an empty glass after the alcohol has mostly evaporated, and all that is left is a shadow of that belly-warming heat and oaky, aldehydic push. On the scent strip, it's a whole different game -- the scent is hot, breathtaking, as in, it actually takes your breath away; it smells of old wood, with a harsh sweetness and a dry, rustic, hay-like tone. It smells peaty, oily, and slightly like a bowl of oatmeal. It. Is. So. FREAKIN'. Great! The dry-down is, well, dry and grassy and very much like the remnants of evaporated whiskey, and it leaves a weird "oily" feel high up in the sinuses and in the back of the throat that I overlooked until about 15 minutes post-eval. Trippy.

I have a big bag of these chips, so I think I will, in a month or two, strain what I have, dry the chips for incense, and recharge the alcohol with another 100 grams of chips before evaporating for extraction. My hope is that this extract will eventually smell malty and tobacco-like, which it is already showing some signs of doing, in addition to those grassy, woody, sweet grain-like smells.